by Gordon Anderson
Life happens to everyone. None of us can avoid the brilliant highs and crushing depths. Some people capture it and make great things happen and others let it slide.
As John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”
One day you’re 18-years-old and on the cusp of life, the essence of promise undiscovered and unfulfilled. Before you really realize you’re counting the lines on your face and the number of kids you have in the back seat.
Fort High has nine players (Robbie Rae, Jeff Davis, Nick Jourdain, Nick Kaun, Chris Bobczynski, Braedon Keast Ryan Windigo, Tarran Romyn and Cole Godbout.) on this years’ team who are, potentially, entering the last phase of competitive hockey.
Some may come back for another Grade 12 “victory lap” and others will venture off into the great-wide open, wherever that happens to be.
But one thing hockey has taught them all over a short lifetime of skating drills and cold rinks on winter mornings are life skills that will far outlive active participation in the game.
“It (hockey) has helped me through the years to be more disciplined with my life,” senior defenceman Robbie Rea.
Hockey has also taught 4th year forward Nick Jourdain a couple of lessons as well.
“I’ve missed the bus once or twice and you don’t play if you miss the bus.” Jourdain added.”Punctuality is definitely important.”
Head coach Shawn Jourdain has seen and helped many players like Rea and Nick Jourdain over the course of his coaching career with the Muskies.
But like others mentors before him, he’s not developing new or radical methods of teaching young kids the basics for a successful life. For him, the tried and true methods are the ones that work best.
“You’ve got to work hard in life and it’s the same with hockey,” Shawn Jourdain said. “There is discipline in your job and there is discipline in hockey. It’s a great game that brings so many attributes to your everyday life: it makes you a hard worker, makes you punctual and that’s something I’ve gained from the game.
“ Hopefully, the kids will gain from it, (too).”
Rea is one such player who has listened and seems to have taken things to heart and gotten an early start to his post high school life.
“I work too,” Rea said. “So, I’m always running back and forth between my job and hockey. Showing up on time for work is like hockey because the coaches expect you to be there on time, be on the bus on time and listen to what they have to say.”
Jourdain doesn’t hammer the players over the head with hockey, he tries to strike a balance between the hockey world and the real world. After all, the players are only at the rink a small percentage of the day.
“One of my coaches away from the rink (current Tampa Bay Lightening assistant coach Wayne Fleming) always talked about everything but hockey. How my home life was, how mom and dad were doing and that’s the way I want to do it with these kids.
“We talk hockey when they want to talk hockey and if they don’t want to we talk about other things.”
But one thing Rea and Jourdain both stress is when you show up at the rink to practice or play, the coach expects everyone’s best.
“He always wants us to work hard and if we’re not giving him 100 per cent he gets upset,” said Nick Jourdain.
Sounds like something everyone can relate to and just another lesson along the path of life, which is never a bad thing.
