Welcome to the team John!
Tell us a bit about your background?
I have a long history here in the Central Oregon area. I have lived here for over half my life. The past 10 years have been spent as a top producing real estate agent here in Bend. I would categorize my life into 4 buckets, family man, Hockey coach/player, Realtor, and outdoorsman. I love fly fishing, camping, hiking... you know the summer stuff, winter is reserved for hockey. LOL The part of my life not in C.O. was spent in Tennessee where I actually learned to play hockey. Believe it or not it is a huge hot bed for hockey nowadays. I have traveled across the country to 100s of rinks and played and coached in 1000s of games in my 30 years of hockey experience.
What's your hockey playing experience?
I began in Tennessee at the age of 10 and quickly advanced in ability, I credit much of that to playing in the street with my friends day in and day out for years on end just loving the game. I traveled as a youth all across the southeast, playing in dozens of rinks. During college I played roller hockey for the travel club in Bend and had the chance to travel all across the west coast for hockey. To this day I absolutely love playing hockey, I love playing Ice and Roller equally there is a lot to learn from each style of play.
How about coaching experience?
As soon as I got my drivers license when I was 16 I signed up to coach hockey. Not because of my altruistic view on the world at 16... HA no. just because I wanted to be on the rink more.. BUT I did quickly fall in love with how impactful coaching is to other kids and their lives. I play in the mens league today with dozens of players that I helped coach when they were younger. So now that I'm 25 years into coaching, I have helped players go off and play at all kinds of different levels from juniors to college to the pros. Coaching is one of the most rewarding things I have ever done.
What are your goals for the program?
I believe that we have an opportunity to put Bend Oregon on the map. And while Bend is a small community that doesn't mean we are not capable of great things. There are communities all across the nation and especially in other countries who are smaller than ours and regularly produce NHL quality talent. No, this won't be easy, we have massive uphill battles, most notably the lack of ice time, but eventually my goal is to change the culture of Bend to be a hockey forward community.
John can be reached at coaching@bendrapidsyouthhockey.org.