The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Adaptive league comes to Mentor
Athletes with disabilities compete in hockey tournament
Mentor’s Ice Arena on Oct. 21 and 22 hosted a hockey tournament like no other.
The event featured world-renowned athletes and up-and-comers, alike, getting up close and personal with each other in the name of competition, crowd reaction and camaraderie.
It’s called sled hockey and, along with wheelchair basketball, is one of a limited selection of team sports in which athletes with disabilities can compete, according to Northeast Sled Hockey League President/Commissioner Mike Ciavarro.
“It’s a way for everybody involved to have that camaraderie and teamwork related to team sports that any able-bodied person could do,” said Ciavarro on Oct. 22 at the arena. “For someone
who’s disabled, obviously those kinds of opportunities aren’t as great as they are for able-bodied individuals.”
He said that, aside from wheelchair basketball, which was widely popularized by the 2005 film Murderball, most adaptive sports are geared more toward individual pursuits like archery, skiing and cycling, for example.
For Ciavarro, who 12 years ago lost all sensation in the lower half of his body, he said, sled hockey was a Godsend.
“I became disabled in 2005, myself,” he said. “And I played hockey before that. So, for me, (sled hockey) is just great.”
He said an important distinction to be recognized between a Paralympic sport — which sled hockey, also known as para ice hockey and, internationally as sledge hockey, became during the 1994 Winter Paralympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway — and sports practiced in conjunction with the Special Olympics, is that participants in the latter typically have a cognitive, developmental disability as opposed to a physical impairment.
“One thing people shouldn’t confuse this with is the Special Olympics,” Ciavarro said.
“The athletes who participate in this sport have mobility impairment — single, double amputees. Some have birth defects. And we definitely have a lot of veterans among our teams. About 20 percent of our league are veterans.”
He added that its also a coed league with a number of female standouts who keep up just fine with the boys on the ice and maybe even surpass some of them in the aggression department, he said.
And that’s one thing not to be misunderstood about this sport: Regardless of impairment, these folks routinely give their able-bodied counterparts a run for their money in exhibition and demo matches the league organizes through its outreach end educational programs.
Just ask Mark McCoy, assistant coach of the Pittsburgh Mighty Penguins Sled Hockey Team, whose 23-year-old son, Dan, has been playing since he was 5.
“They develop an identity throughout school that they’re hockey players. These kids are athletes,” he said, recalling an exhibition game his son’s team played in school against the ablebodied varsity team.
“(The varsity team) went out into it like, ‘Oh, we’ll take it easy on these poor disabled kids.’ But they went out there and they got their asses kicked! They came out of it and they’re like, ‘Damn! These guys can play!’ ”
And that’s an important part of the sport for everyone involved: The chance to play a sport and be part of a team just like every other kid.
Just ask 31-year-old Willowick resident and Columbus Blue Jackets Sled Hockey team player Andrew Vogt, who’s been playing for about 15 years and recently became assistant commissioner of the leagues Adult B Metropolitan Division.
Vogt has been mobilityimpaired his whole life due to a birth defect, he said. But he’s never let it slow him down, especially when athletics were concerned.
“I’ve never let my disability get in the way. I’ve always been able to overcome anything,” he said. “I love physical activity. I love sports. I love being part of a team. Sure, I get bumps and bruises. But I have fun.”
He said he especially likes sled hockey, because it’s something upon which he can always progress.
“I was playing on the Columbus Blue Jackets and we were 1 and 1,” he said. “But I don’t really care about the standings. I just care about improving. I love to practice. Practice makes perfect and it really means a lot to me that I can do this.”
Vogt’s dad, Ken Vogt, with the Ohio Sled Hockey organization, organized the tournament locally. He said the sport is an important part of its constituents’ lives.
“The disabled need an outlet just like everyday people,” he said. “This is an excellent opportunity for them to be involved in a team sport.”
Like Ciavarro, he said those are few for mobilityimpaired athletes.
“Outside of sled hockey, there isn’t much available in terms of team sports, other than wheelchair basketball,” he said.
He also mentioned the sport’s disable-veteran constituency.
“It’s becoming an important outlet for disabled veterans coming back from combat, that maybe used to be very athletic prior to their military days,” he said. “And, maybe coming back, they’ve had to deal with (post-traumatic stress disorder). They might be down in the dumps, because they don’t think they can compete anymore. Then they get pointed toward this, or wheelchair basketball or whatever the case may be, and they can again engage in what was once an important part of their lives.”
And, as far as competition goes, the Mentor arena was host to a number of top competitors who are part of both the men’s and woman’s National League, which will send its members to the 2018 Winter Paralympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
“It’s a fairly big event,” said Willoughby resident and Columbus Blue Jackets assistant coach Brian Knotts, whose son, Erik, also plays on the team.
The elder Knotts said one thing that stands out about the sport — and the people who play it — is the friendship they forge outside the game.
“I think the best way to put it is they know each other pretty well,” he said. “It’s not just teams against teams. It’s friends against friends.
“Just like in any sport, you have that fierce competition come out. Then, at the end of the game, the same two guys that were out there beating the crap out of each other are out on the center of the ice chit-chatting and hugging each other like they are friends for life.”