When Al Michaels asked, “Do you believe in miracles?” I said yes.
There have been a few times over my 55 years when I’ve waited, prayed, asked, demanded a miracle. More often than not it didn’t come. Or at least in the way I had asked. When I was a boy growing up in Vermilion, Alberta I loved the game of hockey. I was like so many other Canadian kids, I grew up worshiping players like Bernie Parent of the Philadelphia Flyers, and Ken Dryden of the Canadiens. I also idolized the players on the Jr. B team in my hometown as they won championship after championship in the the mid 1970s. I dreamt of playing for the Vermilion Jr. B Tigers. But I had a big problem — I couldn’t skate. I looked like Bambi whenever I would step foot on the ice, and didn’t play minor hockey as a young boy. But I could stop a tennis ball during a frozen road hockey game. The only guy I couldn’t stop was my cousin Vern Glowitski.
When I was 13 years old the goalie on the Bantam C team decided that he had had enough. My buddies, Gerry Geake and Rob Webb, convinced me to come try out for the team so they asked the coach, Mel Reid, if he’d be ok with me coming out. Well, I was really nervous when I went for that first practice in the old arena in Vermilion but I found myself getting better as the practice went on. Mel told me I could come back. So I did and eventually played my first game close to my 14th birthday in the Civic Centre in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. The goalie at the other end was a kid named Greg Holtby. If you’re not familiar with him, he was pretty good and eventually went on to the Saskatoon Blades of the WHL and the University of Saskatchewan. And, his son Braden Holtby, well he’s even better winning a Stanley Cup and Vezina Trophy with the Washington Capitals.
We lost my first game against Lloyd 10–0. Obviously I wasn’t good. But I made enough good saves in the third period to give me the confidence to come back. I did. And I got better as the year went on. At a western Canadian Bantam tournament in Lloydminster that spring (1979), I was chosen best goalie on the B side of the tournament, while Greg Holtby took the honours on the A side. It felt good considering there were close to 50 teams there.
After loving my time on C teams in Bantams and then Midgets, it came time for Jr. B. Tiger tryouts in 1981. This was the big one. All year I was focused on getting ready for the fall camp, but I had a couple of setbacks and thought my dream was dead. I cracked three ribs in a football game against Ft. Saskatchewan in October and gained 20 pounds. Then I tore my ankle ligaments in May playing hockey and was unable to walk or train for a month. The pain was so severe in the first few days of my ankle injury, I was unable to eat and lost the 20 pounds I had gained from my cracked ribs. I was this close to the dream and felt it was slipping away.
Something in me decided not to give up. Even though I had a cast on my leg, I decided I was going to swim morning laps at the pool three blocks away. One of the lifeguards, Penny Dowhaniuk, saw me with a plastic bag on my cast, and shook her head. But I kept going back, and she asked if I’d be interested in joining the competitive swim team after my cast came off. “What have I got to lose,” I thought. So I went out and got into good shape and swam the 100 metre breaststroke in the regional meet and qualified for the Alberta Summer Games that August. In October, I went out for the Jr. B Tigers camp, and wouldn’t you know it, after what felt like a lifetime of waiting, I made it. Coach Henry Wasylik picked me but more than that, he took a risk and showed faith in me. I couldn’t believe it. It was a miracle. It still feels like it to this day.
I went on the win MVP honours with the Tigers in my second year, I won the Art Weibe Memorial Trophy — chosen for performance and sportsmanship in the Vermilion Minor Hockey system and MVP of the league all-star game. I was scouted by Princeton University, NAIT, Camrose College and the Fort McMurray Oil Barons of the AJHL. I don’t list these things to brag. But to offer hope to someone. If this can happen to an ordinary guy like me — a joke telling, former heavy whiskey drinking, rock music/air guitar enthusiast — it can happen to you.
