Northern exposure lures Fla. goalie
Clay Witt is, in many respects, a typical teenage boy.
He hangs out with his friends at the mall on Friday nights. He passionately roots for his favorite baseball, hockey, and football teams. He takes pride in his grades as a freshman at Marlborough High. He's even learning to do his own laundry.
But he's also determined to earn a Division 1 college hockey scholarship, and he has traveled a long way to pursue that dream.
Witt is from Brandon, Fla., a suburb just outside Tampa, but the 6-foot-1, 185-pound goalie wanted to continue developing his skills, and signed up to play for the Boston Junior Bruins, an Empire Junior Hockey League team based at the New England Sports Center in Marlborough. So he is now living with a host family in Marlborough.
"I wanted to get out of Florida. It's not exactly a hockey hot spot," said the 15-year-old, who started playing the sport at age 6. "My parents were very supportive. You have to make sacrifices if you want to play at the next level."
Witt is one of a number of players on the roster who have ventured far from home to pursue their hockey dreams. Teammates Connor Knapp, 16, from York, N.Y., a small town south of Rochester, and newcomer Adam Nugent, from Dallas, also live with host families in the area.
The Empire league squad serves as a feeder program for the elite Junior Bruins team in the Eastern Junior Hockey League, which could be a ticket to big-time college hockey.
"I just came up here for the hockey, I wanted more scouts to look at me," said Witt, who described the recent frigid temperatures as "brutal."
He said a few of his hockey friends -- two freshmen, and amazingly, an eighth-grader -- have already been wooed by Division 1 collegiate programs, but he has not received any offers. Witt considered attending Bay State prep power Lawrence Academy, but with a senior goalie standing in his path to playing time, he chose to attend Marlborough High and play for the Junior Bruins.
"They have a great organization with a great reputation," said Witt.
A year ago, while attending Burns Middle School in Brandon, he suited up for the Orlando Stars, a youth team in Florida that played 60-plus games. Last summer, he skated for the Power Selects, a Chicago-based squad whose schedule included a seven-game tour in Slovakia.
Now, with a scholarship to a Division 1 program in the Northeast his goal, Witt lives a short distance from the rink with the family of John Butler, the Marlborough High hockey coach, along with two players from the Junior Bruins' Eastern league squad, Cleveland native Jake Coyle and Kyle Solomon, who is from a town on Long Island in New York.
Witt hangs out with the Butlers' son, Alec, a sophomore defenseman on the high school team. Every two to three weeks, Witt's parents, Ed and Rebecca, fly from Tampa to catch up with their only child and see him play.
He's not sure how long his stay in Marlborough will last. He intends to try out this spring for the under-17 US national team that trains in Ann Arbor, Mich. But he's enjoyed his time in the "small-town atmosphere." Plus, said Witt, who sometimes simply jogs to the skating complex, "It's great having a rink right next to the house."
