Gordon Anderson
PETERBOROUGH—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. Then 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 had nine players on this year’s squad—Robbie Rea, Jeff Davis, Nick Jourdain, Nick Kaun, Chris Bobczynski, Braedon Keast Ryan Windigo, Tarran Romyn, and Cole Godbout—who potentially have completed the last phase of competitive hockey.
Some may come back for a Grade 12 “victory lap” while 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,” said Rea.
Hockey has taught Jourdain, a fourth-year forward, a couple of lessons, as well.
“I’ve missed the bus once or twice and you don’t play if you miss the bus,” he noted.
“Punctuality is definitely important.”
Muskie head coach Shawn Jourdain has seen and helped many players like Rea and Nick Jourdain over the course of his coaching career with the black-and-gold.
But like other 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 reasoned. “There is discipline in your job and there is discipline in hockey.
“It’s a great game that brings so many attributes to your every-day 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,” he remarked. “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,” he stressed.
Jourdain doesn’t hammer the players over the head with hockey. Rather, he tries to strike a balance between the hockey world and the real world.
After all, the players only are at the rink a small percentage of the day.
“One of my coaches away from the rink [current Tampa Bay Lightning assistant coach Wayne Fleming] always talked about everything but hockey,” Jourdain recalled.
“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,” he added.
But one thing Rea and Jourdain both stress is when you show up at the rink to practise or play, the coach expects everyone’s best.
“He always wants us to work hard and if we’re not giving him 100 percent, he gets upset,” Nick Jourdain said.
Sounds like something everyone can relate to and just another lesson along the path of life, which is never a bad thing.
