The story of Hockey Seed
The story of Hockey Seed, told here by Hockey Seed Director Cheri Zubak, is not an uncommon one. Volunteer organizations like Hockey Seed are an important part of every sports community. In the Philadelphia area, you'll find many other youth roller hockey organizations like ours. While most of these organizations are oriented around teams rather than education, the purpose is the same: provide the best support and opportunities possible for kids, families, and the sport they love.
In the beginning were four boys
Like most stories of volunteers, ours is one of love - love of four boys, one of them our own, who wanted to play roller hockey every single waking hour and who, being kids and boys and therefore just a tiny bit competitive, wanted to be really good at it. These four boys played together at the local roller hockey rink on a house team, the Coyotes. 
The kids won games and lost them. In the beginning, losing occurred more than winning but, hey, they were playing roller hockey. Gradually the kids gained more skill, and eventually winning happened more often than losing. Still, after every losing game, you'd see the kids look at each other in a certain way. They'd talk in alternately hushed and excited voices about toe drags and breakaways and "beastly shots." They'd say they wanted to be able to do all of the those cool moves they saw in the game, but when we dug further, we found what they wanted was to be able to win with the apparent ease of the best teams they faced - but they didn't know how. Neither did I. But Walt and I listened, and every once in a while we'd sit together at the rink and talk about it.
The kids practiced a lot on their own - in their driveways, in the basement, in the corners at Sportsplex, whenever and wherever they found opportunity. They practiced weekly as a team and listened to their coaches. They worked hard, they worked together, and they progressed every time they stepped on the rink. They entered a house tournament or two and won. They won their league division that spring, defeating a team that had beaten them in every matchup since they started playing together.
The turning point
After those playoffs, the kids played at The Shootout at the Shore, an annual, end-of-season family event sponsored by the league directors at The Sportsplex. A team showed up that wasn't part of the league. They had cool, matching jerseys. They skated and passed like silk. We had never seen anyone play roller hockey the way they did. They beat the Coyotes 18-0. In fact, they beat every team at the tournament by an dismaying margin.
The parents complained about ringers, but the boys didn't say much. You could see they were thinking about it. They felt mad and helpless. Walt and I, watching them, felt the same way.
When you love your kids and their friends, you have no choice but to act. Sitting around and just wishing for their dreams to come true isn't an option. It wasn't the winning or the losing, we knew from listening to the boys, that was the real issue. Their need to improve was wrapped up with their great desire to battle together on equal footing with their opponents in the game of roller hockey - for that, we believe to this day, is where the real fun of sport lies. Win or lose, it's the battle, the friendship, and the continual drive to be better than who you were yesterday that are most important.
One day, while sitting between games at the rink, Walt and I came up with the idea of hiring a professional roller hockey player to teach a weekly clinic to help the kids improve their skills. After all, we figured (perhaps naively), that's what they do for ice hockey skills development, which - at least on the East Coast - is supposed to be the model for excelling at roller hockey. (Side note: I always thought that was strange. Why do you have to play ice hockey to get better at roller hockey? Play ice if you want to - but why do you have to? Why can't you just become better at roller hockey by developing your skills at roller hockey?)
Brian's clinic
We hired a remarkable young man named Brian Fischer (who still works for us and is like a part of our family), rented rink time at The Sportsplex (Feasterville, PA), and started the clinic. It was hard at first (to be truthful, it's still hard), but we had allies. Most notable of those was Mike Churchville, Executive Director at The Sportsplex, who supported the program in any way he could - advice, guidance, and many hours of listening as we vented. And we had great parents, who somehow always came up with the money even when our numbers were low, which meant the price for the clinic was sometimes rather high.
We persevered because it was important to the kids - not just the "Core Four" as we call those original four boys - but an increasing number of roller hockey kids who wanted to become better players.
"Brian's clinic" became a weekly event around which we organized our lives. I worked the outside of the rink (marketing and managing the clinic, listening to parent concerns, making sure the kids had enough to drink, and other such things), while Brian and Walt took care of the kids on the surface. Brian started coaching the Coyotes with Walt and Mike, dad of two of the Core Four. With Brian teaching the kids at clinic and running weekly practices for the house team, the kids were getting twice a week practices and began to excel. They caught the eye of a couple of tournament team coaches, and the team took off in a new direction: regular participation in tournament roller hockey (Philadelphia Revolution 93 and Jr. Gladiators). The other kids in the clinic also became interested in travel roller hockey, so over time Walt and I cajoled and bribed coaches (hey, whatever it takes) to take a look at our Hockey Seed kids. We're proud to say those coaches have never had any regrets.
The rest, as they say . . .
Well, maybe it's not history. I won't bore you with all of the details, because you no doubt have similar tales to tell, except to say that most of the Hockey Seed kids who have stuck with the program also play travel roller hockey. They're well respected in Philadelphia's roller hockey community. They've done the NARCH thing, the TORHS thing, the AAU thing, the Team USA thing, the State Wars thing, locally the Cougarmania thing , and they have boxes of medals to prove it.
Every week, they still come to clinic, still holding that great desire to improve and, of course, to engage in battle. Because who knows what team is around the corner, ready to show them it's time to up their game? And besides, these kids are friends and always will be, whether they play on the same team or not. In the end, that and roller hockey are what keeps them together. And that's also what keeps Walt and I continuing to carefully grow Hockey Seed.
(posted: January 2005)
