They're playing for Brody and the Broncos
Special Olympics floor-hockey team celebrates national award
Dwayne Anderson is an award winning floor-hockey player, just like the rest of his Special Olympics teammates.
His coed team, the Humboldt Broncos, shares a name with the local SJHL squad. They know each other well. On winter Mondays, stretching back years, two or three ice-hockey Broncos show up at a local school gym and play with the floor-hockey team.
Anderson and his teammates had ties to many of the 16 people killed in the Broncos' 2018 bus crash; most notably, Brody Hinz, a volunteer statistician. He was a player on the Special Olympics squad for a few years.
“I did lose one of my closest friends,” Anderson says. His team has since dedicated their games to Hinz and the Broncos.
They made two out-of-province trips last year, the first they've ever attempted, and won bronze medals at the 2019 Special Olympics Ontario Invitational Youth Games in Toronto, and the Special Olympics Canada Winter Games in Thunder Bay.
Thursday, they added Special Olympics Canada team of the year to that impressive resume.
Anderson says he's proud of those accomplishments, but — and he stresses this repeatedly — it's not why he plays.
“I'm not really in it for the competition,” Anderson, a forward, said this week. “It's supposed to be about having fun. It's trying to overcome an adversarial challenge; isn't that what Special Olympics is about? It's overcoming the challenge imposed on you by your body or your mind.
“It's about the triumph of the human spirit over incredible odds.”
Anderson, 38, has Asperger's syndrome. He says he was diagnosed in May 1999. His school days were not easy.
“Gym class was a completely different experience from the Special Olympics,” Anderson says. “When we were changing in the changing room, other guys would pick on me or beat up on me. One time when I came back from gym class, I found that someone had taken my clothes and thrown them in the toilet.
“And, of course, whenever we were picking teams, I was always the last person to get picked. When we split up into pairs, I always had to go with the gym teacher.
“It's a lot different experience with Special Olympics. I've gotten stronger over the years. I remember one time, when we were actually picking teams at the Special Olympics, for once I actually got picked first.”
Brian Reifferscheid, who has coached Special Olympics in Humboldt for the last 15 years or so, says his team's close ties to the SJHL Broncos made those post-crash days even more difficult — “tough times,” he says, “for our team to go through.
“Most of the athletes go to the games and look up to the Broncos players as their heroes,” he added. “It's always been that way, and it probably always will be that way. That connection's there. Those guys on that team always treat our athletes with respect and dignity, and it's very easy for us to get a connection with them.”
The floor-hockey team's motivations of late include Hinz, their former teammate, who had a head for sports statistics like nobody Reifferscheid has ever seen. He remembers Hinz predicting, well in advance, that the expansion Las Vegas Golden Knights would win the Stanley Cup in 2018. They almost proved him right, defying the odds to reach the final before losing to Washington.
Fundraising for those two big Ontario events was surprisingly easy. The Friends of Logan Boulet Golf Tournament — named after and inspired by a Broncos' player who died in the crash — contributed much of what they needed, and other sponsors jumped on board.
Players, meanwhile, put in the hard work of getting ready. A set of obligations, all documented, kicked in: They practised twice per week, and athletes were required to do a cross-training sport such as soccer or swimming once a week.
Proper diet and nutrition were stressed. “It was exciting, it was fun, and the athletes grabbed the opportunity and worked hard to do what they needed to do,” Reifferscheid said.
They were granted the tournament spot in Toronto to help them prepare for Thunder Bay. Many players had never been on a plane.
The Broncos advanced out of Saskatchewan by beating a Moose Jaw/swift Current team in their division final; they were down one goal late, pulled their goalie and tied it, then scored the winner with two seconds on the clock.
From that tight victory came those two bronze medals on bigger stages, and now team-of-the-year honours.
Unfortunately, they've been shut down since the pandemic hit Saskatchewan in March, and they miss each other.
Anderson, for one, is watching his diet and staying as active as he can, given the limitations at play. He wants to get back out there.
“Everything has been put on hold,” Reifferscheid said. “It's been tough for us. I haven't been able to really spend any time with these guys. Over a year, we were together two nights a week, so it's been tough — tough on our athletes, too.”
On the other hand, it gives them something to look forward to.
“This (award) is an honour for us as a team,” Reifferscheid said. “We're all happy, we're all proud, we're all excited, we're all honoured as a team and as coaches to be given this award. When this is all done, we're going to have a hell of a party.”