Former Pro Soccer Player Pursues UVA Law Degree
1L Antonio Pugliese Aims To Use Law, Communication To Resolve Conflicts
Though Antonio Pugliese is entering law school at the University of Virginia for the first time, he has experience crisscrossing the country and working abroad as another type of professional. Pugliese played for the pro team CD Castellón in Spain following a luminary soccer career in high school.
After hip injuries forced his retirement from sports, he swapped soccer balls for books as a student at the University of Vermont and is now heading to Charlottesville to earn his J.D.
“The combination of my academic interests and experience advocating for people in my communities make me think the law is a great subject to study and build a career in,” he said.
For many years, Pugliese’s life was centered around soccer. He began playing when he was just 3 years old and found that it soon “eclipsed everything else.”
As a child, he regularly played with the age group two to three years older and started seeing attention from U.S. Men’s National Team scouts as he played in early high school tournaments.
Before his sophomore year of high school, he earned a scholarship to attend the IMG Academy Soccer Boarding School in Bradenton, Florida. Up until that point, Pugliese had spent his entire life in Charlotte, Vermont, population 3,912. It was a big move, and he found himself considerably homesick at first.
“You have to make pretty big decisions for yourself at 14 or 15, like how much time you’ll invest in schoolwork when you have this busy soccer schedule,” he said. “Thankfully, I was able to maintain a great focus on academics, which I’m a little surprised by, given how young and immature I was.”
The move also allowed him to come into contact with, and communicate with, a wide variety of people. He traveled to almost every state for soccer tournaments. In his senior year of high school, Pugliese transferred to FC Barcelona’s residency academy outpost in Casa Grande, Arizona, joining for its inaugural season. That led to a contract with the CF La Vall team in Spain, which then landed him a spot on the second-division team for Castellón.
He mostly played with the reserve team, occasionally trained with the first team and hoped to one day become a first-team starter. He had studied Spanish in high school and the experience helped him become more proficient in the language.
But the physical impact of playing soccer since early childhood began to catch up with him. Pugliese experienced hip troubles and, as a result, saw the field less and less.
“Once COVID hit, it was the perfect opportunity to switch gears a bit. I felt like I didn’t have much left to give to soccer,” Pugliese said.
The sport is still a part of his life, and he hopes to play pickup games with fellow students starting this fall. But he was thankful to be able to fully turn his attention to academics, something that had always interested him even when soccer took center stage. He majored in English, with a minor in philosophy, at Vermont.
“Ending my soccer career allowed me to fully explore my passion for reading and textual analysis, which was what put me on the path to applying to UVA Law,” he said.
While at Vermont, he also mentored underserved children through the organization DREAM AmeriCorps. This included planning weekly programming, organizing social events and providing one-on-one mentorship for children in a public housing complex dedicated to refugees from the Congo, Tibet and other regions of geopolitical conflict.
“It starkly showed me how little funding and resources there are for mentorship and education for children in need,” he said. “But it also showed me how valuable it is to be a positive influence in a child’s life rife with obstacles.”
His service further expanded his collaboration and communication with people “from all different walks of life.”
Since he was young, Pugliese’s family had told him he could become a lawyer due to his interests in literature and debate. Even when he was a professional soccer player, his physician mother and architect father thought he should keep an alternate career track in mind. The summer before his sophomore year of college, he decided to try his hand at law by interning at his uncle’s public defense practice in Brooklyn.
“It was extremely rewarding and felt very exciting,” he said. “I loved the advocacy aspect of it, where you’re not necessarily speaking for someone, but you might be helping them operate within a system that they don’t completely understand. It taught me that — at least with my current, infant understanding of the law — lawyering isn’t all about conflict and arguing. It’s also about resolving issues through peaceful discussion.”
Those takeaways resonated deeply with him, helping him to realize that the law can be an avenue in which people can take a step back from contentious public discourse and pivot to a more respectful avenue for resolving conflict.
UVA Law School felt like the right place to learn more about the field. Pugliese felt it was “a very integrated community where the students support each other rather than competing against one another.”
He foresees himself potentially studying public service, youth advocacy or family law, and has also recently been considering the ways in which his unique background signing athletic contracts could translate to a career in transactional law.
“I feel a little overwhelmed by the wealth of opportunities at UVA Law,” he said. “But I know I want to want to use tools like sympathy and empathy to try to put myself in someone else’s shoes and come up with a plan of action to help them secure the rights they deserve.”
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Founded in 1819, the University of Virginia School of Law is the second-oldest continuously operating law school in the nation. Consistently ranked among the top law schools, Virginia is a world-renowned training ground for distinguished lawyers and public servants, instilling in them a commitment to leadership, integrity and community service.
