Knoxville Ice Bears

Road to the Pros [Part 2]

date: 02/22/2012

The Biography of a Hockey Player Part 2

We left off last week with Jason Ford, a Knoxville Ice Bears defenseman and self-proclaimed “mini sticks champion”, explaining to us his youth hockey days and decision to move away from his house in Florida to Toronto, Canada in order to further develop his career as a hockey player. (If you haven’t already read part 1, check it out here.)

So thanks to his courageous decision and his parents’ support, Jason spent his sophomore and junior year of high school in Canada. Although Fordy was a special case, as he stayed with a family friend during his time in Toronto, he says that 9 out of 10 times it is the team’s job to provide the player with something called a “billet family.” These families are basically volunteers, providing the players their homes during their stay. “A lot of the times players will end up building very close relationships with their billet families and they become like an extended family.”

                The two years spent in Toronto was more than just a change of scenery for the young Jason Ford. He also made a change in his playing position after his first tryout with the Toronto Marlboros.  “When I tried out for the team, these kids… They were … they were men! I was getting my butt kicked by 14-year-old ‘men’ with Adams Apples that were getting drafted into the Ontario Hockey League the following year, when I was still a boy.” It was then he realized how big his fellow hockey players were and if he wanted to play hockey at a higher level he was going to have to become a forward.

After completing his junior year in high school in Toronto, Fordy left for Michigan to play his first year of midgets (or Midget Minors) for the West Michigan Warriors and his second year for the Detroit Compuware – an elite midget AAA program coached by the former NHL player and hardest shot record holder in the 1990s, Al Iafrate.

According to Jason, it is from their high school years where hockey players’ lives kind of start to differentiate themselves from other athletes. Most of us who don’t know much about youth hockey would assume that high school hockey is, like most high school sports, the golden opportunity for a successful first step to becoming a professional athlete. However this is not the case. Except for select few high school elite programs, high school hockey is apparently “outdone” by midget hockey.

Once the players are done with midget hockey, most of them, instead of going straight to college like most sports do, go and play junior hockey. And this is what makes hockey different from all other sports. “It’s a completely different level of hockey – it’s almost like a pro hockey experience, because hockey is your main priority.” Jason explains. The major junior hockey leagues are, of course, in Canada and in the United States. The top level junior hockey leagues in these countries are the Canadian Hockey League (a league governing 3 leagues: Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, Ontario Hockey League, and Western Hockey League) and the United States Hockey League. At this point, the players have to think very carefully about their future: Because in the CHL, the players have basically decided on making hockey their future, giving up the option of going to play college hockey; whereas in the USHL the players aren’t required to forego college hockey.

For a couple years Fordy played in the Eastern Junior Hockey League, a “tier 2” junior hockey league in the United States, hoping to get looked at and scouted by college hockey teams. He ended up at Marian University in Wisconsin, a NCAA Division III hockey team. (Jason notes it’s important to keep in mind that in hockey, Division I and Division III are the two important divisions.) And after 4 years of college, he ended up coming to Knoxville as an Ice Bears player. How, you ask? “Well, Mikey [Craigen] was talking to a buddy of mine while I was actually going to a camp in the Central Hockey League, where there were no guarantees for me to make it. So I talked to Mikey and came to try out for the Ice Bears, and now here I am.”

Although Fordy doesn’t have any plans after retirement yet – and with good reason – he knows that it won’t be too difficult to find a job after his retirement. “The good thing about hockey is that it’s a small community with a lot of networking opportunities. We help each other out because they’ve all been through pretty much the same thing, and so we kind of have camaraderie. “

A career in hockey means climbing the ranks and finding your passion in life along the way. It’s hard work, yes, but honestly, what work isn’t hard work? Besides, when you’re doing what you love, nothing is too hard to do; and Jason certainly loves all the hard work he had to put into becoming the great Ice Bears defenseman that he is today. So now, I hope all of you guys have a better idea of how hard these athletes have to work to get where they are at now. And from now on I know you all will cheer these amazing players harder every game and every day.

 

- Sookie-

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