Early Life
Vanek was born in Baden bei Wien, Austria, to Slovak mother Jarmila and father Zdeněk, who moved in 1982 from Czechoslovakia to Austria. He grew up in Zell am See (Salzburg) and in Graz (Styria), where his father played professional ice hockey. He moved in 1998, at age 14, to the United States, where he attended and graduated from O'Gorman High School while playing junior hockey for the Sioux Falls Stampede.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Vanek
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”
—Bible: Hebrew Exodus 21:23.