Nothing but net
There is no ice in Butler.
Ice hockey? Different story.
Butler has three teams — freshman, junior varsity and varsity — competing at the high school level. And they share ice with plenty of neighbors.
Warrendale BladeRunners ice rink has nearly 35 amateur teams sharing its two sheets of ice.
Four high school programs — Hampton, Deer Lakes, Pine-Richland and Butler — play at the Ice Connection in Valencia.
Another 15 amateur teams — including Kittanning, Freeport and Ford City high school programs — play at Belmont Arena in Kittanning.
The North Pittsburgh Wildcats and Butler Valley Dawgs youth hockey associations combine to put 17 teams and more than 200 kids on the ice.
So many players, so little ice. It adds up to the longest season in amateur sports and weighs heavy on the wallet.
"It's a different world,"said Wildcats assistant coach Vic Whann, who has two sons playing on two different teams. "You depend on car pools and keep updated on scores by cell phone.
"It's fun ... but it does get nuts."
Whann estimates it costs $2,400 a year for his boys to play hockey. Butler High School coach Joe Honzo said the Butler Hockey Association shells out $70,000 to field three teams."We pay close to $20,000 in league fees and $30,000 for ice time,"Honzo said. "Each one of our teams gets on the ice twice a week (for practice)."To help defray the cost to his players, Honzo donated his four Pittsburgh Penguins season tickets to the Butler program. Butler's players sell raffle tickets for a chance to win the seats."Some kids sell enough to cover their entire cost to play,"Honzo said. "Others cover half their expenses that way."Our organization raises about $18,000 during the summer, mostly on those tickets, but another $5,000 on a golf outing."Honzo said it requires about $1,200 to outfit a hockey player today.Hockey teams are not financially supported by high schools, nor is the sport covered by the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association. Therefore, the season is not restricted by the calendar.Practice begins around Labor Day and the season wraps up in late March."It's an expensive sport and the schools provide very little help financially,"Mars coach Tim Coleman said. "They pay for basketball and football. Hockey is on its own."Mike Gascoine, a senior forward for Mars, buses tables at a restaurant each summer so he can play hockey each winter."My parents pay the real expenses so I can play, but I try to help them out,"Gascoine said. "I want to pull my own weight financially."A good pair of hockey skates costs nearly $250 and kids grow out of them. Beau Bechtel is a senior on Butler's high school team and has had his skates replaced five times since he began playing ice hockey nearly eight years ago."It costs $1,600 just to be in the (Butler hockey)association,"said Sheila Brady, Bechtel's mother. "The last stick I got him cost $165."The money we spend on gas to get to games and practices, eating out in restaurants, how much total money we're sinking into this ... I don't keep track of it."Ice time costs $210 an hour at Belmont Arena and between $150 and $250 per hour at Warrendale BladeRunners."My parents built this facility,"Belmont Arena director Gary Montebell said. "Hockey has always been a big part of what we do."It costs a lot of money to play, but this rink is rarely empty."
With so many teams, practice times aren't always during prime time."We start practice slots as early as 6:30 a.m. on Saturday and Sundays,"Warrendale BladeRunners manager Rob Hanlen said. "High school teams usually get three to five hours of practice time a week."Hours can run late, though the time is becoming more reasonable."Three years ago, we had games start as late as 9:45 p.m. on the road,"Brady said. "Butler used to practice at 9 p.m. in Kittanning and that's a 40-minute drive."A one and a half hour practice, by the time Beau showered, got home and got to bed, it was past midnight, and the bus came at 7:15 the next morning. That was rough at times."Now high school games don't start later than 9 p.m. and practices often take place after school.Coleman played high school hockey at Fox Chapel in the early 1980s and said there were only five ice rinks around Pittsburgh at that time."Now there's 35 or 40 rinks and maybe 50 sheets of ice," he said. "From where I live, I can drive 10 minutes in any direction now and be at a rink."Honzo recalled practicing on an outdoor rink in South Park when he was a youngster."We had to scrape the snow off the ice before practice,"he said. "Watching that Buffalo-Pittsburgh outdoor NHLgame brought back a lot of memories for me."I grew up in Saxonburg and we had a little pond behind our house that wasn't very deep, so it froze easily. We used to play hockey on it all the time."While rinks have popped up elsewhere, there is still no rink in Butler."It makes a difference in developing hockey players,"Honzo said. "All of the great high school programs — Bethel Park, Meadville, Mount Lebanon, etc. — have rinks on or near campus."Even Mars, which has a great team ... Their kids grew up skating at the Ice Connection every Friday night."
As hockey interest has risen in this region, hockey players have risen in number."Mario Lemieux made a lot of kids around here want to play hockey,"Coleman said. "Now Sidney Crosby is doing the same thing."Coleman and Honzo, hockey players of the previous generation, are among quality hockey coaches of the current generation."Jimmy Black at North Allegheny, Mike Schall at Seneca Valley ... I played against those guys years ago,"Coleman said. "Coaches today are more knowledgeable and put a lot of time in."I had a hockey coach come on the ice wearing army boots back in the 1970s. A lot of guys were coaching who didn't have a clue."Montebell said rinks are developing in-house hockey programs now to get kids started in the sport at a younger age."Most youth hockey organizations cater to the traveling programs," he said. "A lot of families just can't do that. We're trying to work with other rinks to form more basic youth leagues."Kids get to high school and start playing hockey as freshmen, that's a little late. If kids start playing at age 12 or so, there's more time to work on coordination and conditioning."Freeport's high school program — which won the Class APenguin Cup last year — has its Mini-Jackets program, which starts kids playing as young as age 6.Kids who don't get on the ice that young get involved in the sport through dek hockey."That's how my sons caught the bug,"Whann said. "Dek hockey is where a lot of kids learn the game."Bechtel got hooked on the sport through dek hockey as well. He played baseball and football as a youngster before hockey became his sport of choice."I became obsessed with it," he admitted. "I knew a couple of kids on the (ice) hockey team and their parents asked me to play because they were hurting for numbers."I love the aggressiveness of it. It's going to hurt when you take a hit on the ice. It's challenging that way. With football, hitting is something you have to do. With hockey, it's up to you. You can play with aggression or you can play with finesse."Bechtel has had five concussions, has tendinitis in a knee, three scars and a chipped tooth. He even felt tingling in his spine after taking a hit along the boards."It's all worth it to me,"he said, smiling. "Hockey just does it for me. No other sport compares."The talent on the ice today doesn't compare to yesteryear, either."When I played, teams had two or three pretty good players,"Coleman said. "Now teams all over the Pittsburgh area send out three full lines of talented players. The quality of play is impressive."
Without it, amateur hockey couldn't exist."We have a summer program and kids are on the ice all year round now,"Honzo said. "We play road games as far away as Erie and parents have to get their kids there.""You have a game in Johnstown on a weeknight. ... That's rough,"Coleman said. "We try to get the kids to bring their school books with them and read in the car."Brady recalled driving three players to a game in Pittsburgh on a snowy night. Hazardous roads caused their late arrival to the rink."The boys got dressed in the van,"Brady said. "By the time we got there, they had everything on but their skates. We got to the rink, the game had already started. They laced up and went right to the bench."Parents have to depend on each other to get the players around. It's tough to get there sometimes."While her son could have opted for baseball or football as his sport — a much cheaper and less taxing option — Brady has no problem with being a hockey mom."This is what he wants. As a parent, you have to make the sacrifices for your children,"she said."This is the one thing in life he's always loved. When Beau's playing hockey, it lights him up. You can't put a price tag on that."Whann agreed."I don't view it as a chore," he said. "It's something my kids love to do and we're as much a part of it as they are."It's a lifestyle. Our lives revolve around the hockey schedule, that big calendar on our refrigerator that tells us where we need to be next — and we'll get there."
