TheColorOfHockey

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Hockey players of color tout talent – and diversity – at summer tournaments

27 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Blake Bolden, Brown Bears, Bryce Salvador, NextGEN, Sarah Nurse

Two hockey teams of color literally took the show on the road this month to showcase  their skill and their commitment to making the game more diverse.

The women of the Brown Bears and the boys from the NextGEN AAA Foundation didn’t take home any championship trophies, but they still felt like winners because their presence at two New England tournaments proved a point.

“It’s just shows that hockey is for everybody,” Brown Bears co-captain Gina Weires told me. “It shows that we can do it.”

The Brown Bears assembled for the first time at the Hockey Fights MS 2018 Vermont Tournament (Photo/Courtesy Jasmine Bazinet-Phillips).

The NextGEN AAA Foundation team that played in the 2018 Chowder Cup in suburban Boston strikes a pose (Photo/Courtesy Dee Dee Ricks).

Weires and fellow co-captain Jasmine Bazinet-Phillips formed the Brown Bears to participate in the Hockey Fights MS Vermont Tournament.

The two friends wanted their team to be different. They wanted a roster of mostly minority women, something that they never experienced in their years of playing in the Maryland-Washington-Delaware-Virginia area.

“Seeing other hockey players of color around growing up, but very few, we felt that it was important that the ice surface is as diverse as the cities that we live in,” Bazinet-Phillips said. “Getting together the team, we hope to build a network of female hockey players of color, and then give female hockey players of color something to look forward to during the year in terms of coming to the tournament. But we also want to inspire them to go back to their local ice arenas and begin to build diversity at their rinks.”

But the first step for Bazinet-Phillips and Weires was building the Brown Bears’ inaugural roster.

Bazinet-Phillips, a Baltimore native who played NCAA Division III hockey at Maine’s Colby College, and Weires, a Washington, D.C., resident who played for and managed American University’s women’s club hockey team, reached out to the few minority players they knew and then brainstormed about where to find others.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney awkwardly stated that he had “binders full of women” who he could hire if he won the 2012 presidential election.

Weires and Bazinet-Phillips didn’t have binders, but they assembled a Google Doc with the names of 45 minority female hockey players who they could invite to join the Brown Bears, including some heavy hitters.

Brown Bears co-captains Jasmine Bazinet-Phillips, left, and Gina Weires racked their brains, searched the Internet, and even scoured The Color of Hockey, looking for players for their team (Photo/Courtesy Jasmine Bazinet-Phillips).

They contacted Sarah Nurse, who starred at the University of Wisconsin and won a Silver Medal playing for Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

They reached out to defenseman Blake Bolden, a National Women’s Hockey League and Canadian Women’s Hockey League champion who played last season on HC Lugano’s women’s team in Switzerland.

Nurse and Bolden couldn’t make it. But Jordan Smelker, a forward for the NWHL’s Boston Pride, and Toni Sanders, a forward who skated for NCAA Division I Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 2010-11 to 2013-14 did make it.

So did an 18-year-old who played high school varsity hockey and a 55-year old woman who started playing the game five years ago. In all, 12 women of varying skill put on the tie-dyed jersey with the big claw logo and played for the Brown Bears in Vermont.

The team didn’t win a game, largely because tournament organizers moved it out of the women’s division into a more competitive co-ed division because of the presence of Smelker, Sanders and other skilled players.

“We were moved to the second-highest division with predominantly males,” she said. “I think it kind of made the men’s heads spin, but I think they were also happy to have us there. There was a very positive aspect to their reaction.”

The players on the NextGEN team turned heads with their performance at New England’s Pro-Am Hockey’s 2018 Chowder Cup in suburban Boston earlier this month.

NextGEN players in action at 2018 Chowder Cup (Photo/Courtesy Dee Dee Ricks).

NextGEN – a nonprofit organization that provides mentoring, education and hockey programs to low-income and at-risk youth – fielded a team with some of the program’s elite players and sent them to the tournament through a sponsorship from Pure Hockey, the largest hockey equipment retailer in the United States.

The players came from across the U.S. and Canada and had never skated together. But once they hit the ice, it seemed like they had been playing together forever, NextGen founder Dee Dee Ricks said.

Tournament coach Khalil Thomas – head coach and general manager of the Oshawa RiverKings and father of 2018 NHL second-round draft pick Akil Thomas – and Program Director Jeff Devenney ran the players through a few practices and had them ready to go.

NextGEN lost in the tourney’s quarterfinals to the NW Huskies, the team that went on to capture the Chowder Cup championship.

The diverse NextGEN team takes a break during practice at the 2018 Chowder Cup tournament (Photo/Courtesy Dee Dee Ricks).

“It doesn’t really matter about the winning, if you could have seen these kids together. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ricks said. “Just in terms of the bonding, the jelling, the acceptance. Immediately, it was like they were life-long friends, coming together for the cause.”

Bryce Salvador, NextGEN’s NHL alumni ambassador and a former captain for the New Jersey Devils,  said the mostly-minority squad was just thrilled to have the experience.

Embed from Getty Images

“It doesn’t happen so often when you get a team that’s as diverse like that at a high level,” said Salvador, who was the NHL’s third black team captain. “Just the ability for them just to spend time together was, in my opinion, more important than actually playing the game.”

That said, Ricks and the NextGEN brain trust showed as much competitive fire during the tournament as the team that it put on the ice.

“My son went out for three shifts in one of the last games that we were up. And one of the (opposing) kids asked him ‘Why are you playing with a bunch of black kids?'” recalled Ricks, who is white. “And John-John looked at him, and he goes, ‘Why are you losing to a bunch of black kids?'”

Follow the Color of Hockey on Facebook and Twitter @ColorOfHockey. And download the Color of Hockey podcast from iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud and Google Play.

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John Paris, Jr., and Uriah Jones: Two hockey generations paying it forward

11 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Atlanta Thrashers, Bryce Salvador, Chicago Blackhawks, International Hockey League, John Paris, Jr., Life University, New Jersey Devils, University of Toronto Varsity Blues

It’s rare in today’s way-too-busy world to receive a thank-you note – especially from a younger to an elder.

So John Paris, Jr., was pleasantly surprised and gratified when he recently received a message of appreciation via Facebook from Uriah Jones, thanking him for making hockey history.

In 1994, Paris guided the now-defunct Atlanta Knights to the International Hockey League championship and became the first black coach in professional hockey to win a title. Jones, an Atlanta native who works for the Chicago Blackhawks’ youth hockey program, wanted Paris to know what that feat meant to him.

Former Atlanta Knights Coach John Paris, Jr.

Former Atlanta Knights Coach John Paris, Jr.

“I just told him that his contribution to hockey and the things that he’s gone through is inspiring to me as a minority and aspiring coach,” Jones told me recently. “I just shot him a message of encouragement and just thanking him for being who he is.”

Jones’ note filled Paris with pride, all 5-foot-5 inches of him. He said he’s the thankful one for being remembered and being a role model for someone looking to make hockey a career.

“I should be thanking him because if he’s working within the (Blackhawks) organization regardless of whatever the role he’s in – if he saw me doing it and that pushed him to do it, the credit goes to him because he had enough gumption to get up, go out and get the job,” Paris told me.

It doesn’t seem like nearly two decades since he took the Tampa Bay Lightning farm team stocked with young players and seasoned veterans to the IHL’s Turner Cup, Paris said. And it didn’t feel like history in the making when the game clock hit zero and the Knights dispatched the Fort Wayne Komets 4 games to 2 to win the trophy.

“I wasn’t there to be the first black hockey in pro hockey, I was there because I was offered a position,” Paris told me. “What I realized afterwards was the significance of it. You look at (Barack) Obama, who’s president of the United States, and say ‘Well, we can do it.’ Later on, I realized I did open a door.”

But it was slow in opening. Paris, 67, grew up playing hockey in Windsor Nova Scotia.

Uriah Jones was inspired by Paris and aspires to  make hockey a career.

Uriah Jones was inspired by Paris and aspires to make hockey a career.

He played on teams in Quebec’s junior and senior league teams, and played nine games for the Knoxville Knights in the old Eastern Hockey League before shifting to coaching.

He became the first black head coach in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, piloting the Trois Rivière Draveurs and Granby Bisons. But coaching in Quebec – the province where baseball’s Jackie Robinson played before joining the Brooklyn Dodgers – and in the IHL wasn’t a walk in the park.

He was spat upon by fans, had coins thrown at him and the N-word spewed at him. Hate mail and death threats weren’t uncommon.

“There were no coaches I could look to for advice that were of my own culture,” he recalled. “When you’re new at something and people aren’t used to it, then they have preconceived ideas like ‘What’s a guy like that doing coaching?'”

But the abuse didn’t deter Paris. After winning the Turner Cup, Paris went on to coach the IHL’s Macon Whoopee, and later moved to piloting junior teams. Last season he coached the Omaha Lancers, an AAA Under 18 team.

These days Paris is living in Irving, Texas, penning his hockey memoir and developing a program to improve youth hockey coaching, and catching NHL games on TV.

He likes what’s transpired in the game after his historic championship: former Chicago Blackhawks forward Dirk Graham becoming the first player of African decent to coach an National Hockey League team and black players like Bryce Salvador of the New Jersey Devils and Jarome Iginla – formerly of the Calgary Flames, now of the Boston Bruins – having the captain’s “C” sewn onto their jerseys.

He enjoys watching an ever-growing group of minority players like forwards Wayne Simmonds of the Philadelphia Flyers, Nazem Kadri of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Emerson Etem and Devante Smith-Pelly of the Anaheim Ducks and defenseman P.K. Subban of the Montreal Canadiens and Seth Jones of the Nashville Predators not only surviving but thriving in the league.

And Paris loves watching Kevin Weekes, David Amber, Anson Carter and others talking hockey on “Hockey Night in Canada,” NHL Network and NBC Sports, proving to audiences that minorities in hockey is the new normal.

“Kevin Weekes on TV has opened a whole vast new arena,” he said.

Paris hopes to see more coaches like the University of Toronto's Darren Lowe.

Paris hopes to see more coaches like the University of Toronto’s Darren Lowe.

Paris says the next phase is to get more minorities behind the bench and in the front offices of hockey teams. They have been few minority coaches in the NHL. Craig Berube, of Native American/First Nation roots, was recently named coach of the Philadelphia Flyers; Graham led the Blackhawks during the 1998-99 season; Ted Nolan, an Ojibwa Native American/First Nation steered the Buffalo Sabres from 1995 to 1997; and Darren Lowe, the first black to play on a Canadian Olympic hockey team, has coached the University of Toronto Varsity Blues since the 1995-96 season.

“I want more guys look at coaching instead of playing and looking at the executive side,” Paris said. “That’s just normal progression.”

And Paris hopes that Uriah Jones will someday be part of that progression.

Jones, 31, says he got hooked on hockey the minute he started playing floor hockey in Georgia. He eventually progressed to ice and played on suburban Atlanta’s Life University hockey team, a Division 3 American Collegiate Hockey Association club team coached by former Atlanta Flames goaltender Dan Bouchard.

He landed a job in the hockey development department of the Atlanta Thrashers, helping to grow the sport in the Peach State. But the job ended when the Thrashers moved to Winnipeg and became the Jets.

Hockey may have left Atlanta but it didn’t leave Jones. After the Thrashers up and left, Jones packed his bags – for Chicago. There, he found work with the National Basketball Association Chicago Bulls on their equipment staff.

With the Bulls sharing Chicago’s United Center with the Blackhawks, Jones inquired through NHL headquarters in New York and friends in the hockey world about whether there were any job opportunities with the team.

The Blackhawks hired him shortly after last season’s player lockout.  To say that Jones is in hockey heaven working for the Blackhawks is an understatement.

“This is not a game for me – I eat, breathe and sleep hockey, I’m always talking it, it’s crazy,” he told me. “It’s what I do. It’s me.”

And that makes John Paris, Jr., happy.

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