Off the Ice and On the Grill

I played up to the level of Junior B growing up in New York. I played for the Long Island Arrows and the Greater New York Stars. I was a goalie. When I came down here there really wasn't much hockey. What there was was kind of hidden, so I started playing in-line hockey with a bunch of friends and from there the StarCenters opened and we wound up coaching. My wife started playing hockey and I coached her team. It turns out that through coaching the women, one of the husbands had a boy who played on the Garland Stampede. He told me, 'If you can get the women to playing like this you need to be coaching a high school team.' That's where it started. I went and coached at Garland for four seasons and we won a district championship. Then, I moved on to Arlington Martin, and this is now my third season. There used to be an in-line rink called Slapshot and I played there and I refereed there. All these guys [current Martin players] were little guys then. I knew them and got to know their parents from officiating their games. As time moved on I started coaching there, once an opening happened. Since I lived in Arlington I figured I'd really like to coach a team in an area I live in. This way it holds a little more water with me. It was a huge advantage because I knew everybody. That made it a really easy transition. I think with that and with the success of the team and everybody getting along, it's grown into a pretty good partnership; I'm really happy there. I think high school hockey is still growing. I think we still have lapses in players in certain areas, especially in this half of town as opposed to the Planos and Southlakes. They have so many players. A lot of that may have to do with the money thing, because it is expensive to play hockey. I'd like to see hockey get more backing from the schools. It doesn't have to be financial backing. At Martin, a lot of people still don't know we have a hockey team. If we had a little more from the schools, it might help increase the growth and get more people interested because it's a great game. I'm not trying to throw the school under the bus here, but we're one of the few teams that are named after one school. It's right on the edge of being a mainstream sport and I think that's why we don't get that. There's a lot of talk about hockey as a UIL sport, and I think for the players, it would benefit them as far as becoming college athletes. Once it's UIL I think it would be looked at more. A lot of players use their travel hockey to get moved up in the hockey world, and the high school is secondary. I don't think [not being a UIL sport] matters to the players, as far as going out there and playing. Hockey has always been a background sport. Even though it's a major sport, it's always been that background sport right on the edge. In the long run I think they would appreciate it, but as for showing up at the rink from game to game, I don't think it matters to them. We try not to bring up [the disqualification last season], but I think it's in the back of everybody's mind and it is in some sort a driving force. I think the players want to move up and I think that's their driving goal. We're on them all the time about their grades. The first message is that they have to do well in school. I'm a blue collar guy. I use my life experience toward them. I'm like, 'Hey, you want to come work with me at the factory, I'll give you a part time job and you'll understand why you need to work harder in school.' There are a lot of life lessons going on. Just from behaving in the locker room. Little things that they don't think about that mean something, like showing up on time. That's a huge thing. Really that's the big message. We [high school hockey coaches] are like everyone else. We want the best for our kids and we want to achieve high goals. -