Hockey hotbeds grow in warmer climates
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Start with the weather. Different.
"I remember one morning when they called off school because it was too cold," said Boston University's Victor Saponari. "I think it ended up getting into the 60s that day."
And the number of rinks. Certainly different.
"There were four others beside ours," said Northeastern Husky David Strathman. "In the state."
Oh, and the recreational pursuits? Different there, too.
"Surfing," said Mike Beck of the University of New Hampshire. "I know it's a clich??, but I love it. My dad taught me."
Ah, but as they've settled into New England from various warm-weather locales, what wraps these young men in comfort is a sameness they share with those from Bristol to Bangor. Oh, they may have grown up with beach sand beneath their feet and a pulsating winter sun above their head, but they know the genuine joy of metal gliding on ice, of a chill that warms the spirit, of a team game that galvanizes like no other.
They have a passion for hockey, albeit against geographical odds.
"We've adapted and found our ways to get it done," said Beck, born and raised in Long Beach, where it is said the California surfing scene got its start nearly a hundred years ago. Never, however, has it been said that it's a hockey hotbed, though that was hardly a deterrent to Beck.
"I played every sport as a kid but got bored," he said. "I started skating when I was 6 and loved it."
It was 1992 and Wayne Gretzky was in his fourth year with the Los Angeles Kings, his mega-star appeal having generated interest in sun-splashed Tinseltown. No, it didn't translate into a rash of rinks, but fortunately for Beck there was one just five minutes from his house, "double sheets we could use year-round."
Sixteen years later, Beck does his skating for Dick Umile's Wildcats, a sophomore defense man who is proof positive that while the size of the rink hasn't changed, the recruiting landscape most certainly has. Indeed, that is a part of the college hockey world that the late Snooks Kelley would not recognize. Bless his legend, but in Kelley's career he rarely had to travel beyond the Green Line to fill his Boston College rosters. So plentiful were his local options that he never felt the need to visit even Canada.
So what do you think he'd say about Powder Springs, Ga., (Saponari) and Brentwood, Calif. (Casey Wellman of the University of Massachusetts), or Tempe, Ariz. (Strathman), and Naples, Fla. (David Boehm of UMass)?
Given his passion for the game, Kelley more than likely would have listened to the likes of Steve Petruzzella, who has seen hockey dressed as a pond-skating morning in Buffalo and presented from inside an Arizona rink on a 100-degree day. He insists they look the same, feel the same, excite the same, the common denominator being before-dawn or late-night skates.
"There's an element of commitment," said Petruzzella, who settled in Hanover after graduating from Northeastern before business opportunities took him to Arizona, where he is involved in the Desert Youth Hockey Association. "You have to explain to parents why you're skating at 6 or 7 a.m. That's the beauty of the sport. It's not a sport of convenience."
No, but it's one of passion, from coast to coast, snow to sun, frost to sizzle.
"Kids we went to school with didn't know what ice hockey was," said Vinny, a freshman forward. "They didn't know why we were gone so many weekends."
They were in pursuit of youth hockey competition, which requires a bit more of a sacrifice for players in nontraditional hockey hotbeds. Whereas so many youngsters from Pembroke to Portland and Lowell to Longmeadow can join their town's youth program and quench their competitive thirst against neighboring associations, the Saponaris didn't have that luxury. Powder Springs is just outside of Atlanta, and when the reach was extended, there were enough boys to justify a travel program that would visit Nashville, Tenn., and Huntsville, Ala., for games, even up to North Carolina and down to Florida.
"Hockey," said Victor, a sophomore forward, "took over our lives."
The Saponaris' story and hockey roots may surprise those in areas such as Boston or Eden Prairie, Minn. ("Obviously, kids there are more true to the sport," said Beck), but there are those who can relate. Fellow Hockey Easter Wellman, for instance. In Brentwood, which is an hour east of San Francisco, hockey wasn't exactly a popular activity for his peers, so after an uncle, Sam Martinovich, inspired him to embrace the sport, the challenge was to be patient, to persevere against demanding dynamics.
"It required a ton of plane trips, every two weeks," said Wellman, whose father Brad played eight years in baseball's major leagues for the Giants, Dodgers, and Royals. "We'd go to Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Utah, down into the Southwest and up into Canada."
Coming from Long Beach, Beck was in a similar scenario. While friends went to local ballfields or the beach, Beck's shortish youth hockey trips would take him on rides at least 90 minutes and as much as 2 1/2 hours. Longer excursions of six- to seven-hours up to San Francisco or even plane trips to Arizona and points farther were part of the landscape.
Playing for the Florida Junior Everblades, it was common for Boehm to make two-hour car rides to play other Florida youth hockey programs - and those were the easy trips. Like many of his colleagues, Boehm frequently had to travel out of state with his teams for competitive atmospheres, often times to national tournaments in colder climates such as Minnesota and Massachusetts where hockey is a way of life.
It was on such trips that these young players would sense that respect ran thin based on their geographical origins.
"People would see us coming in from California and think it was a joke," said Beck. "They'd think, 'What's this team doing here?' No doubt, we had to prove ourselves."
"It's amazing how much talent there is," said Petruzzella, "but in Arizona kids can play football, baseball, golf, soccer, and tennis every day. Hockey is down their list, so it's a battle to get the top athletes to commit."
But gradually, the sport is making inroads and perception is changing, thanks to DYHA teams like the current Squirt AA entry that recently won a national tournament in Kansas City, Mo. Petruzzella grew up with youth hockey in Buffalo and lived in the Boston area long enough to have a personal attachment to the environment, so he knows what exists in Arizona can't compare numbers-wise.
"Maybe we don't have the quantity," said Petruzzella, "but we just had two [DYHA] teams win two national Thanksgiving tournaments, so it's a testimony to the quality."
In addition to team success, what has helped raise the profile of warm-weather locales within youth hockey circles is the progression of players into major Division 1 collegiate programs. Petruzzella points with pride to former Boston College standout David Spina (Mesa) and his childhood friend Bryan Esner (Northeastern) and to ex-UNH defenseman Brad Flaishans, as well as to Strathman, a junior defenseman, as Arizonans who've made the grade. This trend is becoming the norm, not the exception. A sampling beyond those players previously mentioned:
Each can tell a similar story - how a father or an uncle or a close family friend who had grown up with hockey got them into the game and how the NHL's expansion into warm-weather cities had led to an influx of youth hockey interest. Different twists enter the scenarios, though at some point all of these young men moved from home to get more integrated into a hockey setting. Some, like the Saponaris and Wellman, left to attend high school in the Midwest, while others, like Strathman, remained in their environment until after high school.
He concedes that the better competition he faced came courtesy of his Bantam and Midget youth hockey, but "I was having fun and felt strongly about my high school hockey team," said Strathman, who helped the Corona del Sol Aztecs win the state championship his junior season. OK, so it may have involved beating out 20-25 Arizona teams in a tournament that would never be confused with Massachusetts's Super 8 or anything resembling the Minnesota or Michigan competitions, but Strathman wouldn't have missed the experience for the world. Besides, what sat on the horizon were routes so many serious young hockey players in his position could take - playing for United States Hockey League teams or other big-time junior hockey programs or even the US Under-18 organization.
At that point, the Floridians or Georgians or Texans or Californians or Arizonans were no different from their stick-carrying brethren in South Boston or Quincy, International Falls or Lake Orion, nor those from Malmo, Medicine Hat, or Kamloops. No, they hadn't grown up where they could see their breath on those walks into the local rink, but they have been passionate about following their heart down ice and into the corners.
It's just that they had to make sure they had proof at all times to settle those arguments.
"When I first got to Northeastern, people were always doubting me. They would ask, 'Where are you from?' " said Strathman. "I'd tell them and they'd say, 'Are you serious?' So I'd have to show them my driver's license."
As for his passion for the game, well, no proof was necessary. His Arizona roots said it all.
