On the shores of Lake Wakatipu, steps from the ice rink
After a classic 24 hour journey, 3 flights, a restless red eye, and some old stories, Boe and I arrived in Queenstown New Zealand yesterday. As the plane wove its way through the Southern Alps of the South Island and finally descended on the Queenstown runway we couldn’t help but wonder, “Why is there even an ice rink here?” With just about every outdoor adventure sport one can imagine, it’s an incredible compliment to the local drivers behind Kiwi hockey that their program is alive and well. A minority sport it is, yet the families that keep the Queenstown Hockey program’s wheels in motion could never picture their lives without hockey. Of all the parents we have spoken to today, they all seem to agree that at some point their children were exposed to our great sport, got hooked, and have never looked back.
Queenstown is the center for outdoor adventure in New Zealand. Every second store front is advertising jet boat rides, bungie jumping, hang gliding, downhill mountain biking, and even summer luge. It would be very easy for these kids to play cricket, rugby (even their national hockey team is called the Ice Blacks), ski, snowboard, or mountain bike, yet there they were this morning, running from the car to the rink like any hockey crazed Canadian kid. We spent the day with 40 young hockey players ranging in age from 7-16, and in ability from novice to Junior National Team members. Minus the accents and the questions about what hockey is like in Canada, we felt like we could have been in Vancouver, Carman, or Baltimore. That may sound like an obscure list of North American places, but I live in Vancouver, we’re from Carman, Manitoba, and Boe works with hockey players in Baltimore, Maryland. Considering as I write, our father is coaching in Budapest Hungary, and our mother is teaching in Zurich, Switzerland, the list could get a bit more obscure. Leslie Global Sports continues to be a well chosen name for our company, but I digress…
The morning started with your typical ‘hockey is a small world’ conversations. You know the kind I mean. For instance, we are introduced to two brothers, Dan and Ted Graham, born in Canada, raised in Bermuda, and now owning and running a hockey rink in New Zealand. “Oh, where in Canada are you from? we ask. “Our dad is from Pilot Mound Manitoba” is their reply. “But that can’t be,” we think, as our dad is from Pilot Mound. As chance would have it, their uncle is a legend of a man from Pilot Mound named Fred “Bullet Hole” Graham, who just happens to be one of our father’s closest friends from childhood, and remains so today. To add to the small world order, one of the local players, and the girl renting skates in the skate shop, both attended hockey skills academies in White Rock, BC that I currently instruct (Earl Marriott and Semiahmoo Secondary Schools). Another side note, of which there seem to be many in today’s post, we ended up here due to a friend Theresa Clinton, whose women’s rec league team I assisted from time to time in Whistler, BC, who moved here a year ago. So ya, the hockey world is rather small.
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Naturally before our arrival we were not quite sure what to expect. What we have found is a fantastic arena on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, a group of eager and passionate kids, a supportive group of parent volunteers, and one of the friendliest and most beautiful places on Earth.
