Graduate looks beyond the hockey that brought him to Duluth

Duluth News Tribune (MN) - Monday, May 11, 2009 Author/Byline: Mark Stodghill

Joey Hughes of Melbourne, Australia, doesn't know if he's going to wind up playing professional hockey somewhere in the world or whether a frying pan he's developing will be marketed around the world.

He does know that the education he received at the College of St. Scholas­tica has given him the tools to be successful in whatever he chooses to do.

A guy who came to Scholastica primarily to play hockey graduated Sunday at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center with a bachelor's degree in marketing management and along the way was named to the Northern Collegiate Hockey Associa­tion's all-academic team this past season.

"Coming here is probably the best decision of my life because I'm leaving here educated and matured,'' the 24-year-old Hughes said. "They've given me so much that I'm so comfortable that I can go out in the real world and be very successful. Not just materialistic-wise, but family and friend-wise. I really don't know how to word it, but they've given me an opportunity that I can live my life a lot better than where I was before I came here.''

Hughes was a well-traveled hockey player before he came to Scholastica. He started playing off-ice, inline hockey in Melbourne when he was 11. He decided he wanted to take the game to the ice against the best. His parents allowed him and his older brother, Vincent, to move to British Columbia when Joey was 13 to pursue their education and their hockey careers.

His brother played professional hockey in Germany last season, and Hughes is considering playing there next season. He said he wants to give hockey another year or two before he decides whether to move on to something else.

The Aussie plans to be an entrepreneur of some sort. He's taken a step in that direction by coming up with a disposable frying pan he calls the "Fry and Toss.'' The idea evolved in Scholastica professor Dave Anstett's marketing class.

He said the class taught him how to understand and file for a patent, and he ran with his idea because of the encouragement of Anstett. "He's a great teacher,'' Hughes said. "He doesn't really tell you or direct you. He just kind of throws it on you and teaches in a way where he empowers you to do it. You get to think about it and do the research, rather than him telling you ‘this is how you do it.'''

Hughes said his product is "kind of a cheeky one.'' He interviewed students around campus and went to their apartments to look at their frying pans. He said everyone had a common problem of pans warping and Teflon coming off. Only certain spots of most frying pans would heat up, he said.

He did research on Teflon, talked to other inventors, and obtained a provisional patent. He has an architect friend working on the design and hopes to have a prototype done during the next three months that his idea is protected under the provisional patent.

"He's been a good student, dedicated to getting high-quality work done and understanding what he's doing,'' said Anstett, assistant professor of management at Scholastica. "He's got personal initiative and he's got that special quality that entrepaneurs have of following up on ideas. ... He's very likeable and he's very Benedictine. He helps people and he relates really well to people.''

The 6-foot, 195-pound Hughes was asked about a scabbed-over welt on his thickly-muscled right arm. Was it a remnant of hockey season?

"That's just a scratch; me and the roommates kind of had a last one [tussle,]'' he said and laughed. "One of my roommates said ‘I'm not going to see you guys anymore.' So the three of us kind of wrestled for a bit for old-time sake and tried being little kids again. After, like, 10 minutes of it, we just kind of sat down.''

Hughes joked about how his Crocodile Dundee jargon and accent don't fit with his appearance.

"When I came across [the ocean] a lot of kids said, ‘You're Australian? You don't look Australian. You haven't got blonde hair.'''

Hughes comes from an ethnically diverse family. His father, Charles, is a native of Ireland. His mother, Beatrice, is a native of Chile. They met, married and had four children in Melbourne. Charles runs his own trucking and transport company.

The graduate's parents and his 18-year-old sister, Chantelle, flew 23 hours from Melbourne to attend their son and brother's graduation. Laura Brandon, Joey 's girlfriend of seven years, came from British Columbia for the ceremony.

Charles and Beatrice said they are very proud of their son and admitted that he surprised them with the effort he put into his school work in obtaining his degree.

"When I was done with my papers and done with everything, that was a pretty good feeling,'' Hughes said. "It's starting to kick in that I've done everything that I possibly could and with the family coming here you can't ask for anything more than that. That was the icing on the cake. I was really happy for them to come and see what I've gone through. This is a pretty big day for me.''