Growing the Game: Expanding Hockey's Horizons

On Tuesday, February 21, Union College hosted a panel discussion, moderated by College President David Harris, which included coaches, administrators and hockey advocates that presented the experiences of Black players and coaches in hockey and shared both the challenges and the opportunities facing the sport as it looks to increase its racial diversity and become more inclusive.

ABOUT THE PANEL

The panel included three members with ties to the Union community. Guy Logan ’90 has been a part of the Union family for many years since growing up in Windsor, Ontario. He played four years on the ice at Union, serving as a two-year captain before remaining at the school as an assistant coach while earning his MBA. He also serves on the College’s Board of Trustees.

Lennie Childs and Olivia Soares are in their first years as assistant coaches with the Union men’s and women’s hockey teams, respectively. Childs played his youth hockey outside in Silver Springs, Md., before heading to Wisconsin for his juniors and college career with the Janesville Jets of the North American Hockey League and Concordia University Wisconsin. Soares grew up in West Roxbury, Mass., and starting playing hockey in fourth grade before going to St. George’s School and eventually playing collegiately at The Ohio State University. 

Meredith Lang and Jeff Scott both became involved in the sport due mostly to their children. Lang played hockey in high school after moving to Minnesota and ran track in college, but it was when her children took up hockey at a young age that she became fully immersed in the sport. She is the founder of Mosaic Hockey Collective, a non-profit that empowers players of color to grow the game of hockey in Minnesota. 

Scott grew up in Florida and did not play hockey, but has spent the last 20 years working in professional sports. After working for years in the National Basketball Association, he moved into the hockey world with the New Jersey Devils and currently is the Vice President for Community Growth and Development for the National Hockey League. He sees roles such as his as vitally important in helping to grow the game.

“When I was resigning from my position with the Brooklyn Nets, [my president] actually said to me, ‘Jeff, are you sure you want to make a transition from the NBA to the NHL? There aren’t many people that look like you over at the NHL.’ And I looked him and I said, you know what, that's exactly why I'm making this change.”

BEING “THE ONLY”

No matter their background, all of the panelists looked back at times of being, as Scott termed it, “the only.” While some of those instances were negative, Childs shared his experience about walking into the rink for the first time getting a warm welcome from Nelson Burton, who spent time with the Washington Capitals and was Childs’ coach for many years. 

“I walked in with my hockey bag that I had no idea what to do with, and the first person I met was Nelson,” Childs said. He said ‘Lennie, how are you? Welcome. It's good to see you,’ and I felt welcomed right away. Being that you can have those kind of uncomfortable feelings walking into a place that you don't see a lot of your color, to have someone come in and introduce you, you don't feel like you're doing anything wrong. You feel like you're in the right place.”

Logan echoed those sentiments as someone who played the game in the 1980s, when Black representation was extremely low.

“I did have an opportunity to meet someone that looked like me, and that player was Tony McKegney,” Logan said. “I'm sure you've heard this adage, if you can't see it, you can't be it. So if there was probably one point in my career where I thought, hey, I could get there, it was meeting Tony. When you could connect with someone that happens to look like you in the game that you love, it could be transcendent. And that was really instrumental to me.”

“BECAUSE YOU LOOK DIFFERENT”

While seeing people of color on the ice and in the locker rooms was helpful, the lack of diversity in the game meant that Black players always stood out – for better or worse. 

Soares recalled a story of a conversation she had with her mother after a game in which racial slurs were exchanged. Her mom emphasized that, despite what others may say or do, players must always play a game they are proud of. And that, as a Black athlete in hockey, that is even more important.

“She told me that when you leave the rink and when you walk through the lobby of a rink, everybody will be able to tell who you are in your gear,” Soares said. “If they're watching that game, they're gonna know what team you're on, because you look different. So when you walk out of the rink, make sure you played a game that you are proud of. I think that was something that I will always appreciate for her shaping it like that. Because I was always proud. I was always proud to walk out of the rink, I was always proud to walk into a rink. I loved the game. And I think anybody who plays it loves it.”

CREATING POSITIVE EXPERIENCES

One of the goals of the Mosaic Hockey Collective is to create positive opportunities for players of color, so that they may be proud of their experiences and continue to help grow the game at all levels.

“When I played many moons ago, there was no players of color that I saw. And so it's just really important to me, and I'm driven by leaving the game better,” Lang said. “How can we create opportunities to have inclusion in the game but also positive experiences. Because we know if our players have these positive experiences, they're going to want to stay in the game, and they're going to want to give back to the game. And so I need all of the players in Mosaic Hockey Collective to be the coaches, the referees, the Beer League champions, I need all of those people to come back and give back to the game. And they only do that through positive experiences.”

For Scott, he has seen first-hand the positive impact that hockey can have on a child and a family. His brought his son to work while with the Devils and quickly saw the joy he experienced spending time on the ice, and that appetite has continued to grow through the years. 

“His love for the game and his passion for it has sparked not only me, because it's now my profession, but what I'm able to do with growing the game,” Scott remarked. “I see also what it can do for a family. I see that if you just give a child an opportunity, and you see the doors that it opens, for anyone that's given that opportunity to try it. You can't help but love it.”

And as a recent college graduate, Soares was able to pull from her experiences with a tight-knit team and bring that into her coaching style.

“I think back to my college experience, I was surrounded by a team that loved each other for exactly who we were,” Soares said. “I think as a coach, outside of the X's and O's, and outside of wins and losses, if you can create an environment where your players are sitting across from you, their senior year or after they're graduated, and can say I've learned a ton as a person and as an athlete, I was pushed, I was educated, I grew a ton. I think that is where the true success comes from.”

BENEFITS OF HOCKEY

Logan, who has gone on to a successful career in investment banking, sees opportunities that start at the youth level and continue throughout life. He credits hockey with giving him many of the skills that have served him well throughout his business career. 

“We all hope to play the game forever,” Logan said. “But what do you acquire? You acquire a skill set that teaches you how to deal number one with adversity, how to work and collaborate, be a good teammate, and a work ethic. I think those are key traits that most hockey players possess that will serve them well throughout life.”

As young Black coaches, Childs and Soares have a unique opportunity to help the next generation of players to understand their role in making the game more inclusive and welcoming – both on the ice and in the locker room. 

“I think certainly as a coach, I think about what the conversations are in the locker room,” Soares added. “Is a locker room welcoming? There are many times [when there is an incident], maybe we see it and we hear it and there are articles about it. But I think about the many times where we don't and how those players are impacted. And I've heard of smaller stories, just friends and family that have had things said to them and they don't even want to play anymore because of it. And I think those are the times where we need to start to look at how we can be more prepared to deal with those situations and be prepared to know what conversations to have.”

INVESTING IN HOCKEY

When the lack of diversity in hockey is discussed, another of the many excuses is the cost of the sport. And while hockey is certainly not an inexpensive sport, marketing and managing of time commitments are similar challenges that need to be overcome.

“When I think about the excuses of expenses, I actually take offense to that, because essentially, what we're trying to say is that people of color don't have the means to engage in the sport,” Scott said. “We are just not choosing to engage in the sport, because we haven't made it as culturally available or culturally relevant for us to invest our money into this sport. So we have to think about it from that landscape as well. And then I think it all goes back to representation within our game and how we market it.”

“I'm a single mom, I have a nine-to-five [job], and I still do this non-profit on the side," Lang added. "And so I've been choosing careers and making those sacrifices for my kids to play hockey. And it's not necessarily that we can't afford it, it's really more the time. The time investment in hockey is probably the most costly, not necessarily trying to figure out how we can resource and make funds for it to happen.”

In his job as an investment banker, Logan is in a position to finance arenas, convention centers and hotels around the country. He sees investment in the game as something that makes sense both from a human perspective as well as an economic one.

“If you look at [many of] the major sports, across the gamut, all those other sports you will notice that the complexion of sports has changed over time,” said Logan. “So make it about the economics, as Jeff is, as the NHL is doing. This is good for business, right? Set up an endowment, encourage those in your respective cities to start an endowment in each of their cities to support hockey, to grow the game. That's the economic side of it.”

SEEING THE FUTURE

Childs, for one, is excited about the growth of the sport and the increasing levels of diversity within hockey. Not just because participation levels are rising, but also because of the support systems that are in place and the ability for Black players to remain in the game well past the youth level.

“I do want to say it is coming,” Childs said. “There's more color on the ice, at the youth hockey levels, than I've seen before. And that really gets me really excited. Because as those players develop through the system, they become junior hockey players and move on to college, and now they go through that college career and then that gets them into coaching. So I feel like there are more things to come. But I'm super excited because there are some steps being taken. And I see it right now before my own eyes.”