Tag Archives: Hockey is for Everyone

Detroit park is out with the old Zamboni, in with the new, courtesy of NHL, Red Wings

17 Tuesday Dec 2013

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Anthony Benavides never knew what to expect on most mornings when he’d go to crank up the 40-year-old, hand-me-down Zamboni at Detroit’s Clark Park ice rink.

Sometimes it would fire up. Sometimes it would catch fire. Sometimes it would work fine. Sometimes it would work, then suddenly break down in the middle of resurfacing the only regulation-size outdoor hockey rink within Detroit’s city limits.

Red Wings Coach Mike Babcock shares moment with kids at Clark Park (Photo Courtesy The Detroit News/David Guralnick)

Red Wings Coach Mike Babcock shares moment with kids at Clark Park (Photo Courtesy The Detroit News/David Guralnick)

“It’s had a lot of maintenance issues,” Benavides, the Clark Park Coalition Recreation Center director told me recently. “It’s like an old, old car. It’s on it’s last legs. That puts a damper on our hockey program when we don’t have a properly running Zamboni. We don’t have a back up.”

Benavides’ mornings of mystery are now over, thanks to the National Hockey League and the Detroit Red Wings Foundation. The league and foundation Monday unveiled a new, sparkling Red Wings red Zamboni to replace the rusting ancient wonder and showcased a host of other enhancements and upgrades they donated to Clark Park as part of the 2014 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic Legacy Initiative.

The improvements will better enable the 29-acre park and recreation center to carry out its mission of providing educational, social, and athletic services to the hard-scrabble Southwest Detroit community it serves.

No more resurfacing hassles for Detroit's Clark Park with this new Zamboni from the NHL and Red Wings Foundation.

No more resurfacing hassles for Detroit’s Clark Park with this new Zamboni from the NHL and Red Wings Foundation.

In addition to the Zamboni, the park received upgraded lighting around the outdoor rink and parking lot, an upgraded rink refrigeration system, snow removal equipment for its ice hockey and skating programs, a new ice surface and rink boards, new bicycle racks, and enhancements for the park’s recycling program.

The improvements were done with the help of DTE Energy, Johnson Controls, York, Disenos Ornamental Iron, CleanRiver and NHL Green, and funded by the NHL and Red Wings Foundation, an affiliate of Ilitch Charities. The Red Wings are owned by Mike Ilitch.

“These donations build upon a decade of meaningful partnership and investment by the NHL and Detroit Red Wings into the lives of youth in Southwest Detroit,” Clark Park Coalition President Steve Tobocman said. “This current investment really paves the way to ensure that hockey can continue to be a critical component of our efforts to reach and develop kids living in poverty in this diverse Detroit community for years to come.”

Built in 1973 and bought used, Clark Park's old Zamboni can finally retire.

Built in 1973 and bought used, Clark Park’s old Zamboni can finally retire.

For more than a decade, Clark Park has been a part of “Hockey is for Everyone,” an NHL initiative that provides support and unique programming to some 40 nonprofit youth hockey organizations across North America. It offers children of all backgrounds the opportunity and access to learn to play hockey at little or no cost.

“We’ve seen how successful Hockey is for Everyone has been in this community and how important Clark Park is to this area,” said Brian Jennings, the NHL’s chief marketing officer.

The park itself is an example of the resiliency of the people of Detroit and their drive not to give in to tough  times.

The city government planned to close the park in 1991 because it couldn’t afford to operate it. But residents of the community vowed to keep it open and formed the nonprofit Clark Park Coalition.

Red Wings Coach Mike Babcock and Clark Park's new set of wheels (Photo Courtesy of The Detroit News/David Guralnick).

Red Wings Coach Mike Babcock and Clark Park’s new set of wheels (Photo Courtesy of The Detroit News/David Guralnick).

The coalition took over much of the financial obligation from the city and operates the park today largely through a patchwork of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants and donations.

Along with the “Hockey is for Everyone” programs, the park offers year-round sports programming for more than 1,200 boys and girls. The recreation center also offers after-school tutoring, arts and crafts and other activities. The park’s football and baseball fields are often used by four nearby Detroit schools.

“The Red Wings Foundation is thrilled to be a part of a meaningful initiative like this that gives youth in our community a great place to play hockey, stay healthy and active, and build values like teamwork, respect and integrity,” Christopher Ilitch, chairman of Ilitch Charities and president and CEO if Ilitch Holdings. “It’s particularly special to us because Clark Park is just a couple of miles from the Wings’ home ice and our players and staff enjoy visiting and engaging with young hockey players here.”

From Detroit to Philly, Tarasai Karega blazes hockey trail

15 Sunday Dec 2013

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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.