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Pittsburgh Emperors Expand Special Hockey to Steel City

By Greg Bates - Special to USAHockey.org, 10/14/14, 3:30PM MDT

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WPSHA received a $2,000 grant from The USA Hockey Foundation to help pay for equipment and ice time

John Stevenson and his wife, Tracey, had two children playing last year for the Steel City Icebergs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

When that special needs hockey organization on the north side of the city got too large — there were about 35 to 40 skaters — and ice time started to shrink for the players, the Stevensons felt there was a need for a team in the South Hills of Pittsburgh.

So in February of this year, the Stevensons formed the Western Pennsylvania Special Hockey Association (WPSHA) and named its team the Pittsburgh Emperors.

“Me and my wife thought it was something that we wanted to go ahead and put together ourselves,” said John Stevenson, the association’s president.

The WPSHA caters to boys and girls who have developmental delays, including autism, traumatic brain injuries, Down syndrome and Mitochondrial disease.

“Just seeing it in my daughter’s face, it has done a world of good for her,” said Emperors coach and coaching director Gary Verwer, whose 16-year-old daughter, Sierra, is playing on the team. “Her brother played hockey, and she just adores her brother and followed all the games. When she learned that she had the opportunity to play hockey, I couldn’t hear the end of it. There was no way I was going to say no to her.”

To get the organization up and running, the WPSHA received a $2,000 grant from The USA Hockey Foundation to help pay for equipment and ice time. That money has gone a long way in the first few months of the Emperors’ existence.

“It really helps right now, just trying to get things off the ground and trying to put everything together,” Stevenson said. “We’re starting to get all our paperwork squared away, so that’s [funding] we don’t have to worry about right now.”

The Emperors started with eight to nine kids who moved over from the Steel City Icebergs, including the Stevensons’ two kids, Tobias and Machaiah, and Verwer’s daughter. The kids with experience playing hockey already owned equipment, but since the team added a number of players and was up to 17 kids in mid-September, new equipment was a necessity.

The Emperors have been receiving equipment donations from other youth organizations around the area, and that’s been a big help. The WPSHA’s goal is to provide the players with all the equipment so the families don’t have to worry about any expenses.

“Some of them being able to open up brand new equipment or putting new skates on makes a big deal to these kids,” Verwer said.

The Emperors have grown by about one or two players per month since the team’s inception. Advertising has all been by word of mouth.

Stevenson likes the organization’s pace of progress thus far, as does Verwer.

 “Personally, I like the fact that it’s starting out slow, but I do anticipate a big turnout in a year or two,” Verwer said.

Practice is Under Way

The Emperors had their inaugural practice Aug. 16 and they skate every Saturday at the Bladerunners Ice Complex in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

Both the kids and the coaches are enjoying themselves.

“It’s a lot of fun, quite an experience for me,” said Verwer, who has two assistant coaches. “I’ve never coached before, other than assisted my son’s bantam team when he was younger for a couple of years.”

Verwer is running a standard practice on one end of the ice for the kids who have the ability to skate. For those who are new to the sport, the coaches work with them on basics such as skating with the aid of a chair.

In an early-season practice, one of Verwer’s assistant coaches was helping a player who had a tough time getting around on the ice.

“He basically let him fall down and get back up and try it again. [The coach] told me every time he fell, he laughed and giggled and tried to get back up,” Verwer said. “When you see that, and the hearts of these kids, it brings tears to your eyes. It’s very satisfying.”

There has been a great deal of community support for the WPSHA. Youth groups and high school students from around the Pittsburgh area have expressed interest in on-ice volunteering to help the kids.

The Emperors’ plan this season is to play games against other special needs hockey teams from around the region, including in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The Emperors are also considering the Special Hockey International tournament in March 2015 in the Canadian capital city of Ottawa.

“I know there’s no one on our team unwilling to travel,” Verwer said.

Stevenson would also like to run a summer program in 2015 to extend the season and give the kids more opportunities to play hockey, but he wants to manage growth carefully.

“I don’t want to grow too fast; I want to grow nice and slow,” Stevenson said. “I don’t want to get too big too fast and not be able to support everything that I want to support — that’s my biggest thing.”

Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.

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1972 Olympics: Silver Medals and Friends of Gold

By Jessi Pierce 09/09/2013, 4:00pm MDT

The 1972 U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team is still maintaining friendships from 40 years ago

Their skates may move a little slower than they did nearly 42 years ago in Sapporo, Japan, and there’s probably more silver and white in their hair, but talk to any member of the 1972 U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team, and they instantly go back to that time like it happened just yesterday.

“I can still hear the crunch of the snow from our early morning runs around the Olympic Village and playing in those games,” said former defenseman Tom Mellor, a Rhode Island native. “What an experience it all was – just a bunch of amateur hockey players going out to take on the world one game at a time.”

An improbable run to the silver medal started with an upset of Czechoslovakia that some compared to the U.S.’s wins over the Soviet Union in the 1960 and 1980 Olympic Games. Team member and Minnesota native Craig Sarner credits the intense team bond to helping lift Team USA to its success that year.

U.S. Head Coach Murray Williamson demanded that the team stick together right away, beginning with practices and tryouts that began months prior to the Olympic Games. Sarner and Mellor both note that, “everyone had one another’s backs” and “it became one of our biggest and most important families.”

And it’s a family that hasn’t drifted, even though states and careers now separate them. The team chemistry still carries on today with the majority of the players that donned the Red, White and Blue all those years ago.

“The medal was important,” said Sarner. “But the friendships we developed and the lifelong bond we have is the biggest part of it all. We just enjoy the heck out of being together, and it was that chemistry that helped us prove that will does beat skill sometimes.”

After the Olympic Games, most of the team, which included the likes of a then 16-year-old Mark Howe, Henry Boucha and Mike “Lefty” Curran, went on to some sort of professional hockey career, still staying in touch every year via email and phone calls and trips all across the U.S. Sarner, Mellor and the rest of the squad get together frequently. Their last trip was to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the summer of 2012. Mellor said the team already has plans to meet up again this year, a reunion that everyone looks forward to.

The conversation is not always focused solely on hockey. Sarner is still involved as a scout for the United States Hockey League and North American Hockey League. Mellor hung up the skates and moved on to “life after hockey.”

They also update the hockey family on each player’s personal family.

“I’m a new grandpa with a granddaughter, Eve, so I am boring the guys with photos and information about her constantly,” said Sarner, whose silver-plated medal hangs in Eve’s room. “So I know they’re tiring of it, but we all update on family life and just everything that’s going on with one another. Never a lack of stories, some true, some fabricated, when this group gets together.”

Stories will be shared by the 1972 alums and their extended USA Hockey family for years to come.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better group of guys to play with and meet than that team,” said Mellor. “Them and really everyone involved in the USA Hockey organization, from the 1980 team, and beyond, it’s neat to be a part of something like that – to be a part of that family.”

Olympians Recall Silver Medal Quest in 1952

By Mark Burns 09/18/2014, 3:30pm MDT

Jim Sedin and Don Whiston are 60-plus years removed from their time with the 1952 United States Olympic Ice Hockey Team, a group that won the silver medal in Oslo, Norway. Both men are now in their 80s, and while some memories fade with age, the vivid ones remain.

Sedin remembers scoring the tying goal against Canada in the team’s final round-robin contest. With no knockout stage in those days of Olympic competition, his equalizer secured the silver for Team USA.

As for Whiston, the pomp-and-circumstance commencement of the Olympics still stands out in his mind.

“The opening parade was exciting,” Whiston recalls. “There’s no question about that.”

A former netminder at Brown University, Whiston remembers the U.S. Olympic Committee budgeting roughly $13,000 to cover the team’s expenses in the Olympic village. The sum would have left more than a few bills unpaid, so over the course of three months prior to the Olympic Games, the team traveled throughout Europe, playing 50-plus games to fund their trip with gate receipts.

When the Olympics began, Whiston played in the team’s first game against host Norway, and it’s a memory that lingers with the 87-year-old.

“You can imagine what that was like,” he said. “Standing on the ice and hearing the Star Bangled Banner was enough to give you goosebumps. I think the only time I was more excited was when my children were born.”

Growing up in New England, Whiston didn’t try playing between the pipes until his junior year of high school when he transferred from a Catholic school to a public school.

“I could skate like mad, though,” Whiston says of his time as a player.

His father and uncle had both played goaltender – and a future son would eventually play at Harvard University – so it was only fitting that Whiston continued in net. He might be best known for being the first college netminder to don a facemask.

“I guess I had the genes. The position came very easily to me,” said Whiston, who eventually worked in investment banking for 40 years following the Olympics.

The recent Massachusetts Hockey Hall of Fame inductee doesn’t play much anymore but stays connected to the game by following his young grandson who plays in Colorado. He’ll also be releasing a book soon, focused on his Olympic experience overseas. Even after shoulder- and hip- replacement surgeries and two major back operations, Whiston still works out every day with his two personal trainers and makes time for a weekly appointment with a masseuse.

Like Whiston, Sedin also endured hip surgery, about three months ago, which now results in regular physical therapy sessions.

After participating in the Olympic Games, Sedin contemplated juggling hockey and graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but after more deliberation, he opted for the California Institute of Technology instead.

“I thought that, ‘God, if I go out and start playing semi-pro hockey or professional hockey and try to go graduate school at MIT, I’m not going to make it.’ So I decided to go to Cal Tech,” said Sedin, who concentrated his time in business management and investments in the 1980s after an engineering career.

Pick-up hockey lasted until about 35, followed by a 10-year hiatus. Then came Sedin’s yearly participation in the Snoopy’s Senior World Hockey Tournament, an annual event created by Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schultz for players 40 and up. The 84-year-old Sedin finally stopped playing six years ago, but attempted a comeback on the ice last winter. Despite a strong passion for the game, sometimes the body can’t do what it once did, as the current Sun Valley, Idaho, resident discovered.

“It was just too discouraging,” Sedin said. “I just couldn’t do what I thought I should have been able to do. I may be done now.”

And while the curtain may finally be closing on his hockey-playing days, Sedin, like Whiston, can look back proudly on an epic career highlighted by silver in Oslo and a lifetime of great memories.

 

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