Marco Ballarin has a dream of making the National Hockey League one day.

He is fast on his skates, spontaneous and not afraid to go into the dirty areas to give his team the upper hand.

Marco is also very fortunate.

At the age of three, he was hospitalized for 10 days, including three days in a coma, with bacterial meningitis.

Meningitis is an infection of the fluid in the spinal cord and the fluid that surrounds the brain.

Bacterial meningitis is much more serious than the viral variety and can cause brain damage and even death.

Marco was lucky that his impairment was mainly restricted to a partial loss of hearing.

He was diagnosed with bilateral hearing impairment and was fitted with hearing aids.

But the young Ballarin never liked wearing them. His mother, Michelle, remembers finding them all over the house in various states of repair.

He spent two years at the Vancouver Oral School working on his speech and word pronunciation in preparation for elementary school.

By the age of six, he was ready to attend F.W. Howay Elementary in New Westminster full time.

At the same time, Marco was taking his first strides on the ice in hockey.

It's a game he loves and has excelled at.

Marco has played at the representative level for New Westminster since atom and has captained the peewee and bantam teams as a second-year player.

But it wasn't always that way.

Along the way, there were certain individuals that felt Marco's hearing impairment might be a liability if he continued to play sports.

His parents dealt with that side of the issue, while leaving their middle offspring to his sports.

But intuitively, Marco had already guessed what the concern was all about.

"It kind of made me feel I shouldn't play and yeah, stuff like that. But I just kept it to myself. I kept thinking about it, and then just kept on playing," said Marco.

He got the support he needed from coaches like Jessie Leung, who was his coach in New Westminster hockey for three seasons.

"(Leung) taught me better position and how to be a role model for the team, like staying positive and not getting down on my teammates," Marco said.

It is those leadership skills that Leung hoped to nuture in the young talented skater.

"I saw a kid who wanted to do everything for his team. He wanted to do that to see his team succeed," said Leung.

The two first met when Marco was just 10 years of age and enrolled in a power skating program at Moody Park Arena.

Leung was made aware of Ballarin's impairment but otherwise had not noticed it.

"He has found ways to get around it and cope with it," Leung added.

Marco is now going into his junior year at Burnaby North Secondary, in order to attend the hockey academy at the school.

As a first-year rep, Marco was on the team's second or third lines. But by the second year, he was on the top forward line.

Marco has both the skill, speed and the determination to go into the corners to win the puck.

"He's like a junkyard dog," said Leung.

"He's an exceptional player, great to coach and a joy to watch." The 15-year-old hopes to make New Westminster's AA midget team this fall, in anticipation of bigger and better things as junior-age hockey quickly approaches.

Not long ago, Marco took up lacrosse as a peewee and has been on an A team for the past three seasons, including as an assistant captain of the A2 midget team this year.

"He's our team leader," said A2 lacrosse head coach Dirk Rachfall, who was unaware of Marco's impairment. "When he's out of our lineup for whatever reason we surely miss him." A case in point was during the pre-provincial midget A2 playdowns against Coquitlam.

He missed Game 1 because of hockey commitments in Whistler, and the team lost 7-1. With him back in the lineup for Game 2, New Westminster narrowly lost 6-5 while Marco contributed two goals to the effort.

"I've been doing pretty good," Marco said. "I'm a bit nicer to my teammates, and I don't really complain to my coach as much as I used to. I just deal with it and play past it." Marco is also involved in hockey as an on-ice official.

Last season, Marco and his older brother Nico were both recipients of referee awards handed out by their home association.

Marco won a referee development award for one week of free referee schooling at a camp in Osoyoos.

He also helps Leung coach a peewee spring hockey team.

"It's just nice to be around the ice," Marco said.