One arm ... and one big ambition
Junior B defender won’t let disability keep him from taking hockey to the next level
Many athletes who aren’t quite the same as most people they compete against prefer to be known only as a player, not the player who is different. That’s not Josh Hampel. “I definitely want people to describe me as the athlete who can succeed with one hand,” says the 19-year-old defenceman with junior B hockey’s Hamilton Kilty B’s.
“That’s a big part of me, what makes me unique and separates me from other people and has also helped a lot in my success so far.”
The Waterdown native was born with his left arm ending just below the elbow, but his parents, Nicole and Scott, say their son has never — “And I mean never,” his mother emphasizes — said there is anything he can’t do.
So, he is firmly confident he’ll earn a top-level U.S. college hockey scholarship after this season and, beyond that, something bigger.
“I think I’m the one-handed player who can eventually get to the NHL,” he says.
Hampel’s dogged determination is immeasurably aided by a customized multi-staged prosthesis designed and manufactured by a team at Hamilton Health Sciences.
It’s the highest of tech, involving complicated components of varied materials. In simple terms: a neoprene sleeve fits snugly over what Hampel warmly refers to as his “shortie,” then links to a carbon fibre prosthesis inside a hockey glove.
The bottom of that connects to a short but weighty tube, which is inserted into the top of his sawn-off hockey stick.
There’s a release trigger to allow him to drop the stick if it breaks, so he doesn’t incur a penalty. He can assemble a new stick system within five minutes.
“We’ve had different variations, but this really helps getting my shot off quickly with power and accuracy,” Hampel says. “I’m so grateful to (HHS prosthetists) Karen Litman and Joel Flett.
“I have a really good shot and, without them creating this prosthetic, I couldn’t do it.”
Hockey people generally describe the six-foot, 190-pounder as a mobile two-way defender.
“Josh is a great skater and probably has the hardest shot (80 m.p.h.) on this team,” says Kilty B’s general manager Brian Rizzetto. “He is really dedicated to going after this, and we’ll be in his corner pushing for him.”
The family basement where Josh and his brother Luke, 16, work on weights and skatingimprovement machines offers testament to his shot. Like Sidney Crosby’s famously ruined family clothes dryer, a metal door and a food freezer have been deeply smeared and dented by pucks.
“If I were to have two hands, you never know if I’d have been less-motivated, or even able, to succeed at hockey.” JOSH HAMPEL
HAMILTON KILTY B’S DEFENCEMAN
Hampel’s first prosthesis was a“crawler,” when he was just six months old.
He mastered a myoelectric device (to move an artificial hand) before he was three, and has always had a variety of specific aids for many other pursuits, including swimming and keyboarding.
Afamily relative contacted the New York Yankees for whom Jim Abbott, the one-armed pitcher, had thrown a no-hitter and, shortly after Josh was born, an autographed picture and a humble personal note from Abbott himself arrived at the Hampel home.
Abbott related his own parents’ approach: They’d send him outside and tell him not to come back until lunch. So don’t let anything hold your son back.
The Hampels followed that advice and continued to correspond with Abbott, who also became pen pals with Josh.
“That’s been super huge for me,” Hampel says, but adds his main support system has been his family and their collective open, and go-for-it, attitude.
Hampel originally thought his NHL future might lie in refereeing.
“But my dad said if I wanted to play, he would make it happen,” he says.
Scott Hampel acknowledges, “It wasn’t without challenges. He was cut from the same Hamilton rep team four times.”
“We’d be upset,” Nicole Hampel says, “but Josh would always say ‘Don’t worry, somewhere someone will say Yes!’ ”
There is also the heavy cost of the prosthesis, which is offset, but not fully, by provincial and federal funding and by the War Amps CHAMP program. Josh Hampel’s War Amps mentor was one-armed Scott Stafford, a family friend who played pro hockey and for the Dundas Real Mccoys without a prosthesis.
Hampel wants to serve as a role model for younger players with similar congenital amputations.
He played high school hockey for Downsview’s Blyth Academy, junior B in the Ottawa Valley and, last season, in Blaine, Minn., for the Minnesota Moose of the United States Premier Hockey League. But he feels the Kilty B’s provide him with the best hockey exposure to U.S. colleges and he already has the marks, graduating with a 4.3 grade-point average.
Hampel says he’s never heard any derogatory remarks from other players, on either side of the ice.
“On every team, at first, my teammates are usually a little timid to ask questions but, once they see me play they go, ‘Wow, how do you do what you do?’ I try to crack some jokes, just to help teammates and staff feel more comfortable about it,” he said. “Like, if they ask how I lost my arm, I’ll say a shark bit it off while I was surfing.
“If I were to have two hands, you never know if I’d have been less-motivated, or even able, to succeed at hockey.”
The Kilty B’s are scheduled to begin the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League regular season without contact Jan. 15. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, they initially will be grouped in a four-team miniconference with the Brantford Bandits, Caledonia Corvairs and the St. Catharines Falcons.
The four Niagara teams — the Fort Erie Meteors, Niagara Falls Canucks, Pelham Panthers, Thorold Blackhawks — will form a regional cohort.