A lesson in living
A young boy living his hockey dreams
A nine-year-old boy is getting the homecoming of a lifetime thanks to the Sidney Crosby Hockey School.
Luka McVechter began learning to skate at three years old on the same rinks as his favourite hockey player, Sidney Crosby, but his family moved to a small village in Slovakia’s High Tatra Mountains when he was six.
Wishing to meet his idol, McVechter and his mother, Amanda McCullough, applied to attend the Sidney Crosby Hockey School, which runs from July 10-14 in Cole Harbour.
Of the thousands of applications, McVechter got accepted and will return to the area where he first laced up his skates to improve his skills alongside the best in the game.
“He was over the moon and he started to cry,” McCullough said in a phone interview Wednesday. “He couldn’t believe it because Sidney Crosby is his hero.”
McVechter dreams of one day playing in hockey’s big leagues. The former member of the
Eastern Shore Timbits goes to a hockey academy in Slovakia and spends half the day in the classroom and the other half developing hockey skills.
“He really wants to be a hockey player, that’s for sure,” McCullough said. “He wants to become a better hockey player because of Sidney Crosby.”
Last year, the camp received more than 5,000 applications for 160 spots. The kids, aged 8-12, arrived from each province, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, England and Japan.
The 2016 class of young hockey players got an added treat of seeing the Stanley Cup following Crosby’s parade.
The plans for this year’s edition of a Stanley Cup party have yet to be revealed, but the kids could be in for another visit from the Cup.
Luka woke up at 4:30 a.m. recently to see if Crosby won his third Stanley Cup championship and second-straight playoff MVP, a game that ended in a 2-0 Penguins win over the Nashville Predators.
“(He) jumped on us and said ‘Oh my god! The Penguins won the Cup!’”
McCullough says she decided to fill out the application to teach a life lesson to her son that you sometimes can’t get everything you want in life.
Now, the family, with husband Milan and 5-year-old daughter Guinness will all be making the trip back to Halifax for the camp.
“I honestly didn’t think he would get selected,” she said. “Even though we weren’t planning to come home (this summer), this is the chance of a lifetime for our little boy.”
During the application process, the children are asked to write about why they should be chosen.
“I am very proud to be Canadian, and to be from the same area of Nova Scotia that (Crosby) is from,” McVetcher wrote. “It would be a chance of a lifetime for me to go home to Canada this summer and learn from Sidney Crosby. I want to become a better hockey player.”