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Phantoms bring hockey to Youngstown kids
By charles grove
youngstown
It was far too hot for ice, but that didn’t stop about 30 Youngstown children from picking up sticks and playing street hockey.
The Youngstown Phantoms, working with the Youngstown Parks and Recreation Department, brought out the street hockey balls, goals and sticks to give the kids their chance to pick up the game with some Phantoms players.
“Last year we started this program with [Parks and Recreation] but it was a little different,” said Katie Seminara, the Phantoms director of game day operations and community relations.
“They’d bring the kids to the Covelli Centre and we did street hockey there and then part of our educational component as well. This year we thought we’d switch it up and thought we could bring everything out to the parks. We’re probably close to reaching 250 kids this summer.”
The verdict with the kids? They enjoyed themselves.
“It was exciting,” Amonbrae Madison said. “If you didn’t know how to play hockey you could learn it pretty easy.”
Some picked the game up like they’ve been playing it for years.
“I scored five or six goals,” Imani Harvey said. “I like to run track with my sister and it was fun to run in hockey, too.”
The Phantoms see it as a success as well.
“The kids across the board have all been amazing,” Seminara said. “They’ve been very receptive.”
Wednesday’s group met up at the park right next to the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District and with the help of Seminara and Phantoms head coach Brad Patterson, the kids worked on hockey skills before having some friendly competition by dropping the puck — or ball, in this case.
The hockey component isn’t the only reason for Patterson’s visit within the community. He also tries to teach the kids about life lessons.
“We want to educate them about hockey, but we also want to educate them about teamwork and some things about education,” Patterson said. “We try to educate kids in different areas.”
One of the Parks and Recreation supervisors, Gary Gibson, a junior biology major at Ohio State said the kids are out here five days a week and it was nice to try to introduce them to something new like hockey.
“This was a special day for the kids,” Gibson said. “It’s a creative way to get them doing something they’re not used to doing. They were pretty receptive to it all.”
The Phantoms also gave all the kids a drawstring bookbag with a booklet to not only educate them about hockey but also other things.
“We use that booklet that talks about different components of life,” Patterson said. “It’s about becoming a better person, education, finances, athletics and citizenship. It covers a lot of different areas and it’s got a lot of games, too.”
This meeting was the fifth of seven the Phantoms are doing this summer before school starts again. But the Phantoms aren’t just doing this for the summer.
“We’ll go into different schools,” Patterson said. “With our school-day game we’ll come in and visit with our players and staff and talk about different components about being a good citizen,” Patterson said. “And then we’ll incorporate hockey into that.”
That includes providing schools with hockey equipment so kids in gym class aren’t just forced to shoot hoops all year long.
“Kids in the city and the suburbs have just never been exposed to hockey,” Seminara said. “Part of the program during the school year is to bring the equipment into the schools and donate it and just leave it there so they have it at their disposal to try to incorporate something other than the typical football, baseball and basketball stuff.”