One week ago Friday, my husband and I were driving from Calgary to Saskatoon for an annual fundraiser that his family hosts to raise money for their Relay for Life team. It was around 5:00pm and we were two hours away, passing through Kindersley, when he received a text message from his brother. There had been an accident involving a semi-truck and a bus affiliated with the Humboldt Broncos. His brother, who works for the province as a first responder, was making the two-hour drive from Prince Albert with his crew to help at the scene of the accident. As we got closer to Saskatoon we found a radio station that was covering the accident. Reports were not good; I quickly began to scan my phone to find out information. Pictures started to show up on twitter and other news pages, then our hearts sank. For the remainder of the drive in we listened to the radio in silence holding hands, thinking about our own experiences in the junior hockey world and hoping that the loss of life would be as minimal as possible. It would turn out to be our and so many other Canadians’ worst nightmare.
I grew up in a hockey family, which meant a lot of hours in the car following a bus around Western Canada. When I was eleven and my brother was sixteen, he moved to a town in Saskatchewan to begin life as a junior hockey player. He was excited to have made the team as a sixteen-year-old, on track to a successful career as a hockey player. I was beside myself. He was just a kid and I was worried about leaving him there alone. I can still remember driving away from the rink for the first time, sobbing in the parking lot and trying to explain to my parents why it felt so hard to leave him there. The five-hour drive felt too far away, and a list of “what-if’s” would circle through my head for the first few weeks he was gone.
My worries soon subsided as we learned that he was in good hands there. His billet parents were kind, compassionate, and willing to supply Cheerios and KD in bulk amounts. The team became a family to him, and to us too in a way. When we couldn’t make it to games my parents would listen to them on the computer. The voice of the announcer, Joey, became the soundtrack to many winter evenings at our house. I always wondered if he came in to work with a list of adjectives to describe the puck heading down the ice, because it was never the same. My parents befriended the families of the players, all standing in a group after the game waiting for them to come out. We would memorize the order that they appeared in, my brother always close to last, especially as a rookie when he had to help load the bus. In the summer he would come home with horrible bleached hair and life as a whole family would resume until August. I have fond memories of the arenas we went to (my Dad, a goalie parent, had a designated corner to pace in at every arena), the overnights at familiar hotels, and the pride that I had waiting for my big brother to appear after every game.
There were also pieces of being on a junior hockey team that we only got to see from the outside looking in. At post game dinners, the glasses would start clinking and a slow smile would spread across my brother’s usually stoic face. Shoe checks. A song would come on the radio and the guys would look at each other laughing knowingly, another inside joke that we weren’t in on. The names they had for each other were a part of the culture too; every one had one, even the trainer “Toledo”. During the summer months, my brother would train at a facility that was next door to the outdoor track. I would run past on a warm up with my own team and see the guys in there joking around. It seemed no matter where he was, he was a part of something. Much later in life, my brother and my husband would compare notes about guys that they had both played with. Connected always through the sport that they grew up loving.
As one would imagine, my husband’s perspective of junior hockey is different than mine. He sees things from the inside, feeling everything from a player’s eyes. Growing up in Wakaw, he and his family were familiar with the small-town hockey scene. His brother played midget hockey in Humboldt, later going on to play for then coach a Junior B team in Saskatoon. Kirby played for a team in the SJHL in Northern Saskatchewan and drove the same roads as the Humboldt Broncos for years. When he arrived in La Ronge, his billet family’s home quickly became his own. Penny, his billet Mom, would rub vitamin E onto his knuckles after a fight. She would sneak him the good shampoo from her hair salon, and once let him convince her to perm his long blonde hair. When she got sick of seeing him wear the same old suit every game she went out and bought him a new shirt and tie. At our wedding last year Penny wrote in the guestbook, “Kirby is a part of our family, now you are too Perri”. His teammates became like brothers too, one of whom he followed to a school in North Dakota to play hockey with. He opened his doors to Kirby when he first moved to Calgary to train for the fire department, and is now our next-door neighbour. The team’s trainer & equipment manager went on to work for an NHL team. The days he is in town, they will meet for a beer to catch up. On Saturday night when the NHL team skated out with “Broncos” printed on their backs, we knew he had something to do with it.
For Kirby, the hardest moments in the past week have been seeing those small reminders of life as a player. The image of the players’ cars still parked outside of the rink, or a picture of a broken DVD of the movie Slapshot on the road, remind him that these players were and are just kids like he once was. It is the excitement on the bus ride to a playoff game, growing exponentially as they get closer to the arena. It is the parents, family, and staff close behind; everyone buzzing with nervous energy in anticipation of a big game. During that time, players feel invincible as if they are preparing to head into a battle. To think of that energy, and then the moment that life changed for each member of the Humboldt hockey community is heart wrenching.
When Saturday morning arrived last week, it was as if the whole country was in mourning. It was and is, a depth of sadness usually reserved for the loss of close friends and family members. Kirby was on the phone with teammates and coaches, all of them reaching out to each other at once. None of them knew what to do except to call each other and check in. I was struck by the connection that they all felt to one another. That after fifteen years apart, they could still lean on each other for support. I think that speaks to the culture of hockey in Canada. It is more than just a sport, and it impacts more than just players. It also broke my heart to know that only a province away, boys just like Kirby and his teammates were coming to grips with a tragedy. That their families, and the families of all those injured or lost were suffering an unimaginable pain.
This blog is usually about sport psychology and high performance, but I would be ignoring my own philosophy of practice if I didn’t stop to consider the big picture. Sport, especially hockey in Canada, is about so much more than performance. It is about a family of teammates who become brothers for life, it is about the families of each player becoming a piece of the whole community, and the billet families who change their lives so that they can help shape the lives of young players. It is about the coaching staff whose careers are dedicated to building good players, and good people. It’s the bus driver who makes sure to honk the horn twice on their way out of the parking lot after a win, the staff whose passion for the game drives them to stay involved, and the athletic therapist who spends hours taping, icing and managing the bodies of the players they care for.
As we mourn together as a country, remember to reach out for help if you need it. Take quiet moments to yourself to reflect on your own experiences. Do whatever you can to contribute to the healing of the Humboldt Broncos community and remind yourself that everyone grieves differently. Whatever you are feeling is ok, and the same goes for the person next to you. Lean on the people you love and keep Humboldt in your thoughts even when the accident has run its course in the news cycle. We are all family, the whole country is with Humboldt, feeling for them and loving them, just looking for ways to help.
https://ca.gofundme.com/funds-for-humboldt-broncos