Dear Craig,

Thank you for your insight to this continuing problem.  I have been involved with sled hockey for almost four years.  My daughter who is almost ten has been playing since 2001.  She loved it from the first time she got out on the ice and was able to float across the ice.  It took her to a place she had never been before; she was part of a team, playing a sport that most people would thing impossible for someone in a wheelchair to play.  After about three or four months of playing her confidence went through the roof and started to become more independent in all aspects of her life.  So to say that I love this sport would be an understatement.  I wanted to be come more involved in the sport; I wanted to see other kids get the experience that my daughter got.  I was voted President of the Board, and I wish I never was.  This is when I got a glimpse of the other side of this sport, all of the backstabbing, the undercutting of other players that were trying to expand this sport.  I had to pay more attention to the adult team because they were whining about this and that instead of working things out for themselves. The fighting needs to be left on the ice, but it was carried off and taken to the locker rooms and has spilled out in to the board meetings, and now it has affected even the leaders of this organization.  For a sport that could be so big, why are most of the clubs still struggling?  I tried to put this to rest by joining our adult team.  I have no disability, and this is not an easy sport to just drop into.  All things came to a crushing end when a team member, someone I called friend, someone I had worked so hard for, called me a “wana-be-amputee”.  That was the last straw; after all that I had given to this club that was how I was coming across.  And don’t think that was all it took, to be called a name.  No it was getting the adult team a place to practice every week, putting on a tournament that we could not get junior teams to come down and be a part of.  And then the person that had caused so much trouble for us to become a part of the group that was going to govern the rest of the teams across the nation.

Maybe there need to be a cleaning of the house from the top to the down to make things right.  Maybe the people who keep talking about change, DO IT! 

I do love this sport, but I will not let my daughter stay a part of this if the attitudes of all the people who are involved in this organization don’t change for the better.  Sad to say we have already started our look for a new sport, and if any one says “well good riddance” shame on you, shame on the game.

Former DFW Sled Hockey Foundation President

Keith Dearing  

Return to New England Bruins Home Page