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From crying goalie to bench boss, meet Detroit’s Jason McCrimmon

23 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Amherst College, Cameron Burt, Detroit, Detroit Hockey Association, Jason McCrimmon, Tarasai Karega, University of Massachusetts-Boston

Jason McCrimmon wasn’t feeling it.

His mother enrolled him in a Detroit ice hockey program, but the-then three-year-old McCrimmon was hardly enthused about his visits to chilly Jack Adams Arena .

“My brothers played – I hated it,” McCrimmon told me recently. “I used to cry the whole time. It was cold, I started out as a goalie. I’m standing in one spot, I’m cold, my feet hurt.”

McCrimmon eventually got out of the net to play forward and defense. He developed into a player, and a pretty good one, too. Still, he quit the sport at 16, opting to do what teenagers like to do.

But an epiphany brought him back to frozen pond.

Motor City Hawks Head Coach/Co-Owner Jason McCrimmon working the bench during a USPHL's game.

Motor City Hawks Head Coach/Co-Owner Jason McCrimmon working the bench during a USPHL’s game.

“My father passed away when I was 18. He was the guy that if I scored two goals ‘Why didn’t you have three?’” he said. “I used to hate for him to come to the games. I had a dream when I was 20 years old. He told me to get back into the game.”

Today, the kid who used to cry in goal now barks orders from behind the bench as head coach and part owner of the Motor City Hawks of the U.S. Premier Hockey League, a Tier III junior league where players showcase their talents for college or major junior hockey programs.

McCrimmon is a double-rarity – one of the few black head coaches and team owners in hockey at any level.

He’s part of a small class that includes David L. Steward, a part owner of the National Hockey League’s St. Louis Blues; Khalil Thomas, head coach, general manager, and co-owner of the Oshawa RiverKings of the Greater Metro Junior A Hockey League in Canada; and Darren Lowe , who’s in his 22nd season as head coach of the University of Toronto’s men’s hockey team.

McCrimmon is also president and founder of  Detroit Ice Dreams, a non-profit organization that tries to increase minority participation in hockey and figure skating by lowering the main barriers to the sports – access and cost.

Flint Firebirds defenseman Jalen Smereck, Detroit native, works out with Jason McCrimmon during the summer. Smereck thinks McCrimmon is college or major junior coaching material (Photo/Aaron Bell/OHL Images).

Flint Firebirds defenseman Jalen Smereck, Detroit native, works out with Jason McCrimmon during the summer. Smereck thinks McCrimmon is college or major junior coaching material (Photo/Aaron Bell/OHL Images).

After having that dream about his tough-love hockey dad, McCrimmon contacted the coaches of the Belle Tire’s junior hockey program to ask for a tryout and a path back into the game.

That began a hockey journey that included stops at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, the Mississippi RiverKings of the old Central Hockey League, the Flint Generals of the defunct International Hockey League, and  Hela-Kieko in Finland, where McCrimmon was a high-scoring defenseman and team captain.

Detroit is known for building cars. But the Motor City is also gaining a reputation for building black successful hockey players.

McCrimmon has played with, against, or coached the likes of defenseman Cameron Burt, a former Rochester Institute of Technology star who’s currently skating for Starbulls Rosenheim in Germany and Tarasai Karega, a former Ms. Michigan hockey  award winner who went onto become one of the first black women to win an NCAA hockey title while playing for Amherst College.

“She was one of the best players to come out of the Detroit Hockey Association  – period,” McCrimmon said. “She’s very dangerous. When I played at UMass-Boston, we used to play Amherst. We came down for a two-night series against their male team and I saw her play. She was literally tearing apart the league.”

Motor City Hawks Head Coach/Co-Owner Jason McCrimmon (center) with Hawks forward Justin Session (left) and Flint Firebirds defenseman Jalen Smereck (right), an Arizona Coyotes signee.

Motor City Hawks Head Coach/Co-Owner Jason McCrimmon (center) with Hawks forward Justin Session (left) and Flint Firebirds defenseman Jalen Smereck (right), an Arizona Coyotes signee.

During hockey’s off-season, McCrimmon trains Jalen Smereck, a fellow Detroit native who’s a defenseman for the Ontario Hockey League’s  Flint Firebirds. Smereck recently signed a three-year entry level deal with the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes.

“Having grown up in Detroit, he’s pretty hard on us, making sure we’re always on top of our business and also making sure we as teenagers and young adults come back to help the young kids, teach them how we were taught,” Smereck told me recently. “I definitely think he’d be a good coach at a higher level, not only because he played at a pretty high level, but the way that he coaches, his love for the game, his care for the game. I think he can take players a long way.”

But McCrimmon isn’t thinking about going anywhere right now. There’s too much to do in Motown.

“I’ve had opportunities in the last two years, probably a total of seven different colleges,” he said. “I love being here in Detroit , I’m happy what I’m doing. I want to expand the Motor City Hawks as well as expand our non-profit Ice Dreams. Whatever comes from there, if I get something big that I can’t turn down, we’ll cross that bridge when it happens.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hockey sends Jalen Smereck from one Motown to another

05 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Cameron Burt, Detroit Hockey Association, Hockey is for Everyone, Oshawa Generals, Tarasai Karega

Jalen Smereck hopes to move from one Motor City to another.

The Detroit native has committed to the defending Memorial Cup champion Oshawa Generals this coming season. A left-shooting defenseman, Smereck was drafted by the Ontario Hockey League Generals in 2013 with the 299th overall pick.

He played for the Bloomington Thunder after that team selected him in the first round with the 18th overall pick of the 2014 United States Hockey League Phase II Draft. He scored three goals and 15 assists in 51 games for the Thunder in 2014-15. He also played two games for the Odessa Jackalopes of the North American Hockey League and tallied one assist.

“Jalen was a draft pick of ours a couple of years ago and he has continued to develop as a player over the past couple of years,” Oshawa General Manager Ron Hunt said. “Mike Kelly (the Generals’ director of hockey operations) and I watched him play for the Bloomington Thunder this past year and feel he is ready to make the jump to the OHL.”

Jalen Smereck hopes to crack the Oshawa Generals lineup in 2015-16.

Jalen Smereck hopes to crack the Oshawa Generals lineup in 2015-16.

Smereck reports to Oshawa’s training camp at Oshawa’s General Motors Centre at the end of the summer. If his makes the roster, he will move 260 miles from America’s Motor City to the self-proclaimed automotive capital of Canada.

Smereck, 18, is an alum of the Detroit Hockey Association, a program affiliated with the National Hockey League’s “Hockey is for Everyone” initiative which provides kids of all backgrounds the opportunity to learn and play hockey at little or no cost. In return, program participants must stay in school and maintain good grades.

The DHA has produced several hockey players of color who’ve gone on to play in college and professional leagues.

Tarasai Karega, one of the first black women to win an NCAA hockey championship, and Cameron Burt, a defenseman for the ECHL’s Florida Everblades and former Rochester Institute of Technology star, are among the program’s graduates.

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From Detroit to Philly, Tarasai Karega blazes hockey trail

15 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Carolina Hurricanes, Detroit Dragons, Detroit Hockey Association, Hockey is for Everyone, Philadelphia Flyers, Tarasai Karega

Tarasai Karega is a living hat trick – a black, female, ice hockey player.

The game courses through her veins, and has ever since she watched the 1992 Disney movie “The Mighty Ducks” as a child and became intrigued by one of the team’s players.

“Jesse (played by actor Brandon Adams) stood  out to me because he was the only black kid on the team,” Karega recalled. “I told my mom I wanted to play hockey and she did some research on organizations in Detroit.”

A movie and a mother’s inquiries launched a unique and history-making hockey career that’s taken Karega from hometown Detroit to chilly Amherst, Mass., to the streets of Philadelphia.

Detroit's Tarasai Karega shares her hockey knowledge with kids in Philadelphia.

Detroit’s Tarasai Karega shares her hockey knowledge with kids in Philadelphia.

Along the way, she’s gone from often being the lone brown-skinned girl on the ice to the producer of a small army of young minority hockey players – girls and boys.

Karega has grown from being a player with the individual talent to take over a game to a teacher with the ability to make others better by sharing the lessons she’s learned from hockey on and off the ice.

“I often heard – even from my own extended family – people saying ‘Black people don’t play hockey,’ or, “Girls don’t play hockey,'” she told Temple University’s News Center. “I walk into the rink with my equipment and people still look at me like I’m an alien. But I don’t do stereotypes. It fueled me more than it discouraged me.”

Since 2010, Karega has worked as coordinator for hockey operations for the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation, a program created by the founder of the Philadelphia Flyers that uses hockey as a tool to help educate young people and prepare them for adult life.

She’s a vital cog in a program that provides free hockey equipment, instruction and ice time to more than 3,000 kids in the Philadelphia area. The program, part of the NHL’s “Hockey is for Everyone” initiative, also blends in a rigorous off-ice life skills curriculum for kids and additional educational services to help them improve in school.

“Tarasai has been a terrific addition to our staff. We are very fortunate to have her,” Scott Tharp, Snider Hockey’s president, told me recently. “One of our long-term goals is to build a staff that is more closely reflective of the children, youth, families that we serve.”

“Today, 30 percent of our students are women and the number is growing everyday,” Tharp added. “Tarasai along with a very talented group of peer women coaches, are a big, big, part of this growth.”

Karega, the teacher, is also Karega, the student. She’s enrolled in the Master’s Degree program at Temple University’s School of Tourism and Hospitality Management. She’s studying sports business.
“I was talking to a family friend who knew the owner of the Carolina Hurricanes…,” she told Temple’s News Center. “One day he said to me, ‘You know, Tarasai, you could own a sports team.’ I laughed, and then I thought, ‘Hey, I could own a team.’ It got me interested in sport business and sport operations – not just the competitive aspect.”

Tiny but tough, Karega began playing hockey competitively at age nine. She started

Tarasai Karega was a standout player for Amherst College. (Photo/Amherst College)

Tarasai Karega was a standout player for Amherst College. (Photo/Amherst College)

with the Detroit Dragons of the Detroit Hockey Association, another “Hockey is for Everyone” organization.

She went on to play at the Cranbrook-Kingswood School in suburban Detroit. In
2005, she scored the game-tying goal and double-overtime-winning goal in the state championship tournament. She was named Michigan’s Ms. Hockey that year.
Karega’s hockey exploits in Michigan caught the attention of Amherst College in Massachusetts. She played for the NCAA Division III Lord Jeffs and was named first-team All New England Small College Athletic Conference as a sophomore.
Karega  racked up 61 goals and 51 assists for 112 total points in 110 games during her collegiate career and maintained a 3.34 grade-point average.
In the 2008-09 season she made history by becoming one of the first black women to win an NCAA hockey title when the Jeffs captured college’s Division III crown.
While Karega says she has enjoyed her hockey journey, she’s not shy in talking about the challenges she faced being black and female in a sport that’s predominantly white.
“I can laugh about it now, because I’m an adult and I’ve learned to handle situations. But growing up, especially in Detroit, there were three other black girls on my team, and we would experience things,” Karega told NHL.com earlier this year. “People called us names. It was tough. And then I went to high school and college, I was the only one. It was just me by myself. People are kind of confused when they see someone like myself play hockey.”
But through her work at Snider Hockey, Karega knows that company is coming.

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