As the parents of first-generation hockey players, Kamili Williams and Chris Bland had their eyes opened quickly to some of the downsides of the game.

“As we were learning the sport and meeting other hockey families, we kind of noticed a few things,” Bland said. “After a few years, we noticed that some of the kids were kind of fading away because they were becoming disillusioned with the sport due to experiences on and off the ice.”

With that knowledge, the pair who have four kids together decided to help fill the gap and created We Play Hockey Too, with a mission statement of: “Develop resilient and confident hockey players of color by reaffirming their identity through providing support and a network of peers.”

We Play Hockey Too is a complementary program to what players already experience, whether it be through high school or other teams in the Parsippany, New Jersey, area. 

Instead of having a handful of teams that travel to tournaments on a weekly basis, We Play Hockey Too created a spot for players to improve on their skills or learn more about other aspects of hockey, including nutrition and opportunities.

“We realized that there was a lot that we didn’t know coming into the sport,” said Bland, president of the organization. “I’ll be transparent and say I thought my kid was going to get everything when he went to practice. I didn’t know about skills clinics and development and navigating teams. That became a common thread as we met more and more families.”

So, the program became a melting pot of information shared by parents who signed their kids up for We Play Hockey Too. There’s no one expert among the group, but they all pitched in with their knowledge of the game to help their kids grow as players.

The program began in 2020 with a mere handful of kids at the first clinic. In 2023, the organization became a nonprofit and it now has a roster of 120 families — including boys and girls from the squirt to midget levels — using the program’s various services. Primarily, that is clinics that typically take place during holiday breaks, like for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Martin Luther King Jr. Day or Presidents Day, for example. 

Not every kid gets to participate in a tournament with their team, for one reason or another, so We Play Hockey holds its clinics at that time to not just fill the void, but to accentuate the hockey experience.

“When all of us started talking to our kids, we realized that they were feeling isolated, having a lack of identity in the sport,” said Williams, a board member who leads the fundraising charge. “That really led us to bring parents that we had met along the way together and just really try to get the kids together so that they wouldn’t feel so alone in the sport. Even though they were all on different teams, they at least could see that, ‘OK, I’m not the only Latino kid that’s playing this sport that isn’t traditional. I’m not the only Asian kid that’s playing this sport.’”

Showing the kids there are others like them playing hockey is one of the benefits of participating in We Play Hockey Too, but the other is how the program approaches skill development. 

While some hockey clubs simply show a skill and then expect a youngster to replicate it without knowing its benefit, We Play Hockey Too makes sure to educate players on what a drill is for and how it will make them a better player.

“Take the time, break it down, explain it to them so that they learn it because, more than anything, that’s what you want your kid to do,” Bland said. “You want them to be successful by learning something, not ‘See what I did, good luck.’ Figuring out how best to help the kids was our initial challenge — what could we do as parents. Being a group of people versus an individual, it gave us power and leverage to get the ice, to bring the coach in and dictate what we wanted for our kids to make them successful.”

We Play Hockey Too does get involved in tournaments, putting together teams for about three tournaments a year with up to three teams in an event.

As part of the overall development, We Play Hockey Too has webinars on nutrition, NCAA eligibility and injury management, with the hope of adding one on how players can talk to officials during a game. There have also been seminars involving college players talking with players and showing what can be achieved as well as from USA Hockey and its American Development Model so parents know what that is and what to expect from coaches.

While already having a buddy program where current players can bring a friend to a clinic for free, We Play Hockey Too is hoping to build out an academy program. Similar to the skills clinics, the academy would be a complementary aspect to what players already receive at school and with their other teams.

“When families come to our clinics, the experience is more than just the skills,” Bland said. “It’s a connection, it’s a growing of the community. It’s a chance to relate to people who have shared experiences. But we believe that in order to truly get that level of development that’s going to help you or that’s going to show up at tryouts to help you move on to the next level, we need to be more hands-on, more consistent with interaction and skill development, so ideally, the academy is that opportunity.”

Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.