By Gina Capellazzi, Team FSO website administrator
Photos by Robin Ritoss and Olivia Serafini
For years, Olivia Serafini spent her summers inside crisp, cold ice rinks, preparing for the upcoming figure skating season. Now the former competitive figure skater’s summers are spent in ballparks and clubhouses, surrounded by baseball bats and balls.
A leap from figure skating to baseball might seem unlikely for many, but for Serafini, who is now a dietitian with the Major League Baseball organization, the New York Yankees, she sees a lot of similarities among her two worlds.
A love for skating started at a young age
Serafini grew up in Niskayuna, NY, just outside of Albany. The youngest of three children, the 29-year-old started skating at a very young age after her mom, Annie, took Serafini’s older brother, Louis, to Learn to Skate classes.
“Being that I was so young, me and my sister were both in the stands with my mom, and I guess we were crying because we also wanted to be on the ice,” Serafini recalled of her first moments on the ice. “So mom went right up to one of the coaches and asked if her daughters were too young to take classes. They said, ‘no, they’re not too young,’ and so we stepped on the ice for classes when the session ended. My brother no longer continued (skating), and my sister and I just never stopped.”
Serafini said she always took her skating seriously. When she felt she outgrew her skating environment, her mom drove her and her sister, Helen, down to New Jersey every Friday. While Serafini said training in New Jersey was helpful in her qualifying for Nationals at the junior level, she felt she hit a point where she was just at the bottom of the barrel.
“I would make it to these big competitions, but I would come in last place, second to last place,” she explained. “I’d get there and I didn’t feel like I had the capabilities, or just whole package against the skaters that I was competing against.”
Moving out west
So in 2014, Serafini left the capital region of New York state to train with Rafael Arutyunyan, one of the nation’s top skating coaches in southern California. At the time, his students consisted of Nathan Chen, Adam Rippon and Ashley Wagner. The cross-country change led to Serafini becoming the 2015 U.S. junior women’s silver medalist.
“The medal means a lot more to me than just a silver medal at Nationals,” Serafini said, who noted that her mom moved out with her to California while her dad, Rocco, stayed back in New York. “It represented everything that I put in and worked towards.”
The following season, Serafini moved up to the senior level, but battled some injuries and struggled with confidence as a senior-level skater. As a result, Serafini decided to apply to some colleges. A visit to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs with Arutyunyan and her training mates was when she discovered an interest in studying nutrition in college.
“Everyone was there to fuel themselves,” she said, recalling being in the dining hall with other athletes. “We all had the same goal of making the Olympic team, but we all had different plates of food because we all had different needs. But I recognized in that moment that food and nutrition is a really important aspect of getting to the Olympics that I had never thought of before. And so, being that I saw the dietitian there and she was helping athletes, I thought that was the coolest thing, and I said to myself, ‘I want to do that.’”
Turning to pairs
While Serafini was waiting to hear back from schools, the 2018 Winter Olympic Games were taking place in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The day after the pairs’ free skate, Serafini said she received a call to do a pairs’ tryout.
“It was the most coincidental thing ever,” she explained. “I had no idea, like I didn’t tell anybody I wanted to do pairs, nothing. Long story short, I was like, ‘You know, what? I have nothing to do right now but try because I’m waiting to hear back from colleges,’ and I decided I was going to do a tryout, and I kind of wanted to see if I liked it, and I really liked it.”
Serafini teamed up with Mervin Tran, who had won a World bronze medal and a U.S. silver medal with his previous partners. Then as luck would have it, just a couple days after the start of their new partnership, Serafini learned she had been accepted to New York University (NYU). She chose to defer her education for a few years to skate with Tran.
The new team debuted at the 2019 U.S. Championships and made their international debut that fall at Finlandia Trophy, where they finished fifth. They also finished seventh at Golden Spin of Zagreb. That fall, they also won the U.S. Pairs Final to qualify for their second U.S. Championships, where they finished seventh.
“The competitions that Mervin and I did internationally, I find all of them to be highlights of our pairs’ career because to me it felt so cool to be able to actually travel internationally and represent Team USA,” Serafini said, reflecting on her pairs’ career.
The two did compete at the 2020 Skate America, where because of the COVID-19 pandemic the competitors consisted only of U.S. skaters or those who trained in the United States. Serafini and Tran finished sixth at that event, and then sixth at the U.S. Championships, which was their final event together.
Embracing collegiate skating
When Serafini and Tran moved back to the east coast for training during their partnership, Serafini was able to start her college education while still training. She started NYU in January 2020.
“I was only there (at NYU) about a month and then COVID hit, and everything transitioned to online, which was sort of a blessing in disguise for my personal career and college degree because NYU didn’t offer pretty much any online courses and so COVID kind of forced them to do so,” Serafini explained. “So even when things started to open back up, they still offered some classes online and that helped me to be able to continue my college degree while still training.”
Upon the conclusion of her pairs’ career with Tran, Serafini focused solely on her studies at NYU. While Serafini said it was a difficult decision to step away from competitive skating, she didn’t stop skating cold turkey. She embraced collegiate skating, competing with the NYU Figure Skating team.
“Collegiate skating is such a beautiful and wonderful thing to have, and I’m so glad that it’s grown as large as it has over the past few years. I’m so fortunate to have the NYU figure skating team be a part of my skating journey, because it was the best thing for me as I transitioned out of competitive sport,” Serafini expressed.
Beginning her career as a dietitian
Serafini graduated from NYU in December 2022, earning a bachelor’s degree in nutrition and dietetics.
After graduating, Serafini needed to do 1,000 hours out in the field before she could sit for her dietetic exam. She did a full-year internship at different rotations from clinical settings, community service and food service. Knowing that she wanted to be a dietitian in a sports setting, her internship program connected her with the Cleveland Guardians baseball team. Serafini completed the last rotation of her internship in Arizona with the Cleveland Guardians.
“I really owe it to Miguel, the dietitian there, because he was an incredible mentor, and I didn’t know what sport I wanted to go into after I graduated, and I really enjoyed my time there (with the Guardians), and I was like, ‘I think I kind of like baseball, I think I could do this.’”
Serafini sat for her exam in the fall of 2023. Her first job as a dietitian was with the Houston Astros, where she worked for them for a full season with their Single-A minor league team, the Fayetteville Woodpeckers, based in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Following working for Major League Baseball’s Fall League in Arizona, Serafini got the job with the New York Yankees in the fall of 2024.
Working with the Yankees
Serafini, who is based in Tampa, works with the Yankees’ Single-A minor league team, the Tampa Tarpons, as well as the organizations’ rookie teams in Tampa and the Dominican Republic.
As a sports dietitian, Serafini says her job can vary from day- to=day, but her main responsibilities include catering food for the players’ pre-game and post-game meals.
“I’m always on the phone with restaurants, with catering companies, planning out venues, and then we also do menu planning at our facilities here, where we have our chefs,” she explained of some of her duties.
Also part of Serafini’s responsibilities is meeting with the players. While she does have some scheduled meetings with them for meal planning, she is also checking in with them during their meal time. Serafini also does make smoothies on a daily basis.
“I feel like I should add on my resume, part-time smoothie maker,” she laughed. “That is one way that the guys get a lot of their calories in. So, smoothies are a big part of my day.”
Since Tampa is where all of the Yankees’ players are based during spring training, Serafini has had the opportunity to meet some of the major league players.
“It’s really cool. It’s amazing to see them on TV and then in person, and it’s one of those situations where you realize, they are all the same as you and me,” she said. “I know they’re making a lot more money than I am, and they have a lot more name, but every player that I’ve had the privilege of meeting with the Yankees has been nothing but kind, and doesn’t treat the minor league staff any differently than they would their major league staff, and so we’re here to support them as well.”
The similarities between skating and baseball
For Serafini, working in baseball doesn’t feel all that different to what life was like as a competitive figure skater.
“It’s Groundhog’s Day every day for them, they rinse and repeat. They get to the field, they do their warm-ups, they have lift days. It’s the same kind of routine that you would have for skating when you get to the rink. You do your warm-up routine and get on the ice. So it’s very similar in the sense that most of your day-to-day is the same thing, so when I think about it in the lens of a figure skater and what I went through, I can relate to the grind,” she explained.
As a former athlete, Serafini says she is also able to direct her conversations with athletes and use that personal experience to help them from a nutrition standpoint be able to cope and work through some of their challenges and struggles that they’re dealing with.
One thing that shocked Serafini about working in the baseball field was that many of the athletes struggle with potential eating disorders or eating disorder behaviors, something that is quite commonplace in figure skating.
“In the baseball world, I see it, but it’s seen in a different way,” Serafini said.
While her job keeps her busy working six days a week during the baseball season, Serafini hasn’t completely given up the skating world for baseball. She coaches part-time at a rink in Brandon, Florida. She also skates whenever she can herself.
“Anytime I can squeeze in 30 minutes here and there, I will go out there and skate,” Serafini stated.
Just the beginning
Even though she is just getting started in her career as a dietitian, Serafini is enjoying her time with her favorite baseball team.
“I feel like I have a family in baseball that goes beyond just the staff that I’ve been able to work with at the Yankees,” she said. “I have friends that I consider like family to me from baseball, and even the players are wonderful people that I get the opportunity to work with.”
And while many would consider this a dream job to be working with the most successful franchise in baseball history, Serafini has her sights set on one day going to the Olympics as a dietitian.
“I always wanted to go (to the Olympics),” she said, getting emotionally. “I remember when I was retired from skating competitively, it was hard because I knew timing wise I was getting older, and I really wanted to be a dietitian, and I didn’t want to prolong that career choice. But I also knew that I had this passion and dream of making it to the Olympics as an athlete, and it was hard to let go of that dream. But I had this point in my career where I felt I realized that I didn’t need to completely give up on my dream of going to the Olympics, I just maybe will go to the Olympics in a different way.”
