Shaun Newman Podcast - Ep. 81 - Ambrose Firkus

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

First off thank you to Ambrose for coming in & sharing his difficult story. Here is a guy that has talent oozing out whether it is in ball where he won national championships & played for team Canada or hockey where he played Junior 'A' & had a full ride up to Alaska NCAA Div 1. In this episode although I am talking to a talented athlete it is his story about his billet dad trying to molest him that has shook him to the core. This is one we all need to hear & I appreciate Ambrose sitting down to share his story.

Hey guys, Ambrose Furkus here. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Before we get going here, over this past weekend, we did the Bobcats Fun Run. And just a shout out to the Lloyd Bobcats and Nigel DuBay for setting that up and getting everybody out and being a little active. And, you know, raising the money for a good cause. I got the wife and kids all out here. and I was excited, you know, 5K. Don't really do too many.

It was kind of a miserable day, but I mean, whatever, you're running 5K. So we pull out the, you know, Shay's got his bikes. We're going to put him on the bike. And then Mel and I are going to run. And we got like a double kind of push, you know, two-seater that Mila and our youngest Casey can sit in. And so we start running. Awesome. I'm like, something wrong with the front tire.

And look and front tire is flat. Of course, we start walking. Oh, wait, the compressor isn't back at the house. It's in the office because I'm working on the new studio. Ah, crap. Okay, so we walk to Husky. We fill the front tire up. No harm, no foul, right?

Okay, let's start running again. This time now we've already walked a kilometer, but whatever. So we start running again. You know, we make it about a kilometer now. And I go to put it up a curb, and the front tire breaks completely off. So now we're sitting a car. kilometer from home. And we have to walk this thing back all the way to the house. On two wheels. Lift it up. But I'm not going to let this get me down. We're finishing this run.

I mean, we are finishing this run. So now we're back there. Shade by this time. It's cold. It's miserable. He goes, I'm not riding my bike anymore. So what do we do? We got a double stroller. So we put the youngest in the back, meal in the front. Shea rides underneath. combined have added it up. They weigh 100 pounds. So now I'm pushing a 100 pound double stroller for a 5K. I used to say by the time I got back home, I could hardly walk. So thank you Bobcats for putting that on. I'm officially resigning from running another 5K until next summer. And hopefully by then my children will bike and dad won't wreck things. But it was a ton of fun. So if you were out running, shout out to the Lloyd Bobcats. Now, today, Lord Minister, Regional Health

Foundation would like to thank our local health care team who responded so quickly to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our local hospital leaders move fast to secure life-saving supplies for our frontline staff, and within days our hospital had a strong stock of life-saving supplies from the local community. This happened because of you, our donors, thanks to strong support from all of our donors over many years, our frontline workers are empowered to care for all of us through the Lloydminster Region Health Foundation. If you're looking for ways to help a COVID-19 emergency fund has been started, while there is no pressure to give in these uncertain times, we are taking donations to cover a variety of items that have already been purchased

and still need to be purchased. The Health Foundation encourages those looking to donate to call us at 306-82061 or online at LRHF.ca backslash donate. Mazz Entertainment. Anybody have been paying attention to their social media feed? He wants to let you know if you're planning an intimate ceremony for a wedding. Give him a call. Or how about the TV he's got for the backyard?

Anybody seen that one? Now you can watch a movie under the stars with the kids or hook up a video game maybe, play a little NHL in the backyard. Or how about the cool one? The blow-up movie screen that they did for the grad class. I think it was out by Neilberg, he said. And so they had a drive-in grader-end garage. graduating night or driving Grand March.

Geez, I don't even know what it's called. But essentially, the grad class pulled all up in vehicles. They had this big TV on a trailer, and Bada Bing, Bada Boom, they had them all dressed up and everything. They had music going. I highly suggest you check out their Maz Entertainment's Facebook or Instagram for videos and pictures of it. But give them a call, give Cody a call at 7802. He'll get you hooked up. He's got some cool things going on right now during this time to help people, you know, enjoy their special moments.

Lionel and Kelly Duryey, Reynolds Plumbing, they're open for business, residential and commercial plumbing and heating, regular hours Monday, Friday, or Monday, 2 Friday, 8 to 5, temporary close to walkins. Please phone ahead so they can be prepared for social distancing measures. Reynolds has been serving the Lloydminster and surrounding area for over 40 years, 40 years. Give them a call at 780875 3405. Chris Weeb, keep a concrete, open for business, specializing in commercial and agricultural and agricultural and, of course, residential. Basement floors, driveway, sidewalks, patios, garage pads, shops, barns, and countertops. Essentially, if you can dream it, they can do it. Give the boys a call 780871, 1083.

Kenny Rutherford. I mentioned the last week that I was moving out, and I'm currently sitting in the new studio. A shout out to Ken and Ken Rutherford Appraisals, or Rutherford Appraisal Group, for housing me for the first year and a couple months of the podcast. Couldn't have done it without you guys. He says in these difficult times,

if you're in need of any appraisal work, from bank loans, setting a fair purchase price, whether you're buying or selling any type of real estate, shop, homes, farms, cabins, restaurants, etc. Give Kenny a call 306, 307. 1732. I promise you will not find anyone better. Factory sports, Taylor Holt and Nathan Mullet, they're open for business folks. The doors are open. You can give them a call 306, 825-7678 or stop in. That's something we haven't been able to say for quite some time. Go grab yourself a brand new bike today and get out there riding.

Carly Clause and Windsor Plywood open regular hours. Call ahead so they can help with physical distancing. They have curbside pickup or free in town delivery while this is currently going on. They are, that's their vinyl, vinyl flooring that is now the podcast theme wall. It looks really sharp. They got some cool stuff in the shop there. So if you're looking for some custom woodworking, maybe a brand new, I don't know, river table that I'm staring at that I'm happy to have and be back around. Stop in and see Carly Closs in a day at Windsor Plywood.

Call and ring at CR sales and marketing is hoping everyone is staying healthy and safe. If you're looking for a unique and cost-effective approach to sales and marketing within the oil and gas industry, give Colin a call 780-871 1417. Corey Dubik, Midwest flooring, their open regular hours, call, stop in or shop online. Lori LaBerge, Abbey Road, Flowers and Gifts, temporary close to walk-ins but are doing curbside pickup and free in-town delivery 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 7808.7. 75-2211. Wander and Wild has teamed up with Let's Walk the Talk, where if you buy any of the Let's Walk to Talk apparel through Wander and Wild, $10 of it goes back to a local organization that is giving money back to the community.

That is Stacey Jubinville, of course, that we're talking about. Head over to her website and check out what Wander and Wild's got going on. They got some cool, cool stuff. Girt Athletics, check them out on Instagram or Facebook. They still have a deal going on where if you spend $100, you get $25 back to a local business of your choice. Now, a reminder to subscribe and leave some feedback on whatever platform you're using

while listening to this, whether you're on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, now YouTube. Let me know what you think, and make sure you subscribe so every time there's a new episode, you're getting dinged for it. Now, here is your Factory Sports Tale of the Tape. Ambrose Furcus is an interesting story. He's from Irma, Alberta. He is a talented hockey player, athlete, I should say. He played fastball growing up, played for Team Canada, won national championships in hockey.

He, you know, moved to Lloyd to play midgett, Bantam AAA, midgett AAA. He moved on to Junior A ranks, had a scholarship to go to up into Alaska. you got a bad concussion off of, well, you're going to hear the story. He gets a bad concussion that knocks him out of it from ball of all things, not hockey, from his ball career. But a lot of what we talk about is his story from dealing with his billet, dad, and Spruce Grove. It is a uncomfortable story, needless to say. So I caution people when they start listening.

It may come as a surprise as we get partially into it. I really appreciate Ambrose coming on and sharing his story, and I won't hold you up any longer. So without further ado. Okay, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast tonight. I'm joined by Mr. Ambrose Furkus. First off, thanks for coming in. I appreciate it.

Pleasure's all mine. Second off, you got one of the coolest names I've ever heard. So where is your family from with a last name, Fergus? I believe we're Polish. It's actually my grandpa's, it would have been his middle name. Oh, okay. Okay. Middle name?

Yeah. Why middle name? Give me a little bit of history here. I don't know the whole history. It was Clifford Ambrose, Fergus, and then, yeah, it's been Ambrose since. Oh, okay. Oh, Ambrose. You're talking Ambrose.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was talking Fergus. Yeah, I believe that's Polish, I think. I'm not 100% sure, but. Oh, okay. Now, you're originally from Irma, correct? Yeah. Can you tell me what it is about the Irma?

Irma drinking water that just has people left right and center athletes buzzing out of there? Yeah, I had a feeling this was going to come up. No, I think it's constantly, we're just constantly playing sports and competing against each other from the time I was three years old. I had friends in the same age group that were, we constantly, it didn't matter if it was hockey or if it was picking up garbage, it was competition no matter what you were doing. So I think that helped along the way. And then we were just constantly making up games.

Honestly, I couldn't even count the amount of games that we've just. just randomly made up that end up being a competition and then we'll go after school we would go and play that game again for a week and then the game would be it would be different the next week and just constantly the whole time you remember what was one of the fun games you made up uh we've always played scrub i don't know if that's a made up game but it would be we'd always play on diamond one or two and we'd put uh we'd have bases that we'd make out of shoes and it's split up in the teams there'd be seven or eight of us on each team and you'd have a midi like a a mini infield kind of thing you'd play

and then an outfield and we'd play ball that way if you couldn't get on the diamond or if it was too light or sorry too dark and I remember one of the best parts was we got lights on diamond two and that was a big scrub game we had. We turned the lights on there and had a big scrap game like the old days. We were probably, I would say we were

16, 17 still at that time. Yeah, you're constantly messing around back home. It was a blast. You play a little bit of road hockey as well? Yeah. Have you heard any of that story? No. Oh, I thought the way you were looking. Yeah, we had a huge series of that. Every day after school, we'd go and same thing. There were seven or eight guys on each team,

like Logan Ganey from around there, all the Gannies, Ty Ganey, Justin Ganey, Parker McKay, Carson Sousie, Taylor Shabbah, Ty Fisher, Zach McKay. So it's kind of all the brothers and then the odd ones mixed in. And we'd get together. There's pictures on Facebook still where we'd be soaking rain out there and we'd all be out there playing until the lights again the lights came on in the outdoor rink which was in town and we played till god knows when like it was it was a blast honestly we had series out of seven and then we go best of seven out of seven and it was just it was constant no one would let the losing happen like it was it was it got heated it was fun god i miss being a kid and getting to do

that kind of stuff right like road hockey was the best pond hockey was the best yeah Did you guys have, with your rinked, it was just open to go skater? Did you guys have, because I found out, I think it was Huxley on here, telling me that in the month of July you guys put the ice back in an Irma, which is mind-boggling for a small town to do. Like, it just seems like there must be a few different things that Irma's doing that allows athletes or just kids in general to be active all the time. Yeah, so they never had the ice in July when we were going up there.

that was always kind of I guess the off-ice or sorry the off-season was more off-season for us then it wasn't really huge for all the off-ice training or sorry on-ice training and all that kind of stuff so it was more or less honestly the road hockey that kind of stuff that we would get our reps in like that's kind of where it came from there

they just started putting the ice in it was last summer the summer before like that hasn't always happened that just started to happen here the last little while but yeah I assume it's not happening this summer. No, not this summer. I think Vikings taking over this summer.

They're going to try and get theirs in sometime in July. Oh, really? You know, for a guy who now makes his living doing training on ice through the summers in the year, what are your thoughts on that? I mean, you talk about the old school mentality of when it's summer, you take your skates off, you throw them in a bag, and you focus on something else, keep the brain healthy and happy. to go back to hockey in the fall.

You still have that mindset and seeing kids now that you're training? And what's your thoughts? I think there's definitely benefit to it. I think now you're going to fall behind if you're not doing the extra stuff. I think now almost everyone that you would see that's at a higher level is doing all the extra. So I think back in the day, that wasn't quite the same. I wouldn't say. Like I said, yeah, I think you're going to fall behind a little bit now if you don't do it.

And I'm not saying that just because that's what I do. I think that's the honest truth. do still believe that there is time that after playoffs come you have to put your skates away for a little bit otherwise eventually anyone's going to get burnt out in my head i think yeah except for the odd is that odd kid you can just keep it on 24-7 isn't there yeah it's i i don't understand it like i know even for myself it's nice to get the skates away for a little bit this covid's gotten them a little a little longer than i would have liked but it's always nice to have two weeks even here there just to kind of refresh, I guess you'd say.

You know, I was, I talked to Clark MacArthur, well, his episode came out this week, I guess. And there's a guy that played summer hockey, right? I mean, it's a little different than what goes on now. But, you know, as much as the old school mentality was you stayed away, and that's a guy who played, we were talking about before we got on, right? He was a pitcher in fastball and won Westerns and his mom coached, and he played competitive of sports there as well but when it got to the right time he was in summer hockey in the cities and i mean i remember quite uh well lots of kids going and doing that back in the day now it's just

i mean the access to it is amazing it's crazy that irma puts ice in in july to me i just that's unreal yeah it goes a lot to tell kind of about the town that people are willing to put the ice in and take it out and take care of it while it's in for that month just uh honestly just to have some extra skating is all it is. Has Irma always been a hotbed for hockey or sports? Yeah, they've always, I don't want to say dominant, but they've always been good, yeah. Yeah, they were dominant, eh? Even growing up, like, they were good then, too. I remember going to the rink as a little kid watching the Aces play against the wrestlers, and that was always a heated series. And who won those games? Because you know they're going to be listening right now,

putting you on the spot. Aces. You're here first, folks. I'll get in trouble for that Have you ever thought about playing for the Aces? They were bugging me It would have been two years ago or so Kind of just

Yeah, it would have been two years ago They were bugging me to come play They said they give me just power play time That's it You don't have to go do anything else No, I'm all right fellas Never wanted to go play a little senior? I did, but I've just seen all the liberties that happened

And kind of with the concussion stuff It just didn't make much sense to me Like I did, I'd Don't get me wrong, I still want to play, but it's just not worth it now. God damn. Senior hockey's a lot of fun, though. Yeah, I believe that. I believe it would be.

It might be worth it just to take a couple ships on the power play, rip a couple home, and drink a couple beers after the night. That's right. Right, hang out in the Irma. What do they got for a dressing room, do you know? Yeah, they got two rooms for themselves. Two? Yeah, one and two, and then they can lock the one in between,

so other teams can use room, too. I got stalls They got a good setup in there I tell you what One of the One of the awesome things With senior hockey is going into small towns, barns Like there's

You know when you play When you get going up the levels right I mean I only ever played Junior A And then Division 3 right And so those cities are a little bigger But when you go back down to a small Saskatchew and Alberta Senior hockey

and you get back in the, well, I haven't played in Irman's rink. That's one rink. I'm pretty sure growing up I never played him. Really? No, I don't think so, which is kind of funny because I played, you know, relatively close. Yeah. Well, I mean really close. Yeah.

Now you get to go into, while Nealberg took a leave of absence, but Kid Scotty and Nealberg, Marwain, Dewberry, two hills. Yeah, Irma's. Freak and Ice. Irma's old for sure. How old's the ring? Toh, I have no idea. I wouldn't even be. able to guess what no old yeah oh yeah what what style is it the uh the big uh beam dome yeah like

the barn looking kind of thing yeah yeah yeah probably came with the rest of them yeah it still has the pillars that go up like all the way up through the top yeah they found a way to keep that thing from being condemned yeah yeah i don't know how randy gainy does a number back home well back in the day i think it was in the 60s i want to say somebody will quote me on this the government gave grants to all the small communities to build those style rinks. I mean, that's how Helmand's got built. And if you look at all the old buildings and everybody's listening to this going, why are we talking about rinks?

But when back, I think it was like 1967, 65 somewhere in there, government gave it a big grant to any community that wanted to get a rink going. If you can believe that. And so that's why all of them are kind of look the same. Like you're walking, this is kind of deja vu. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's been around, I wouldn't even be able to guess, honestly. Well, so you're saying then it's just the group of kids? Is there younger? I mean, your brother's now. How many years younger would he be than you eight? He just turned 16, so I'm 25 now, so.

Oh, nine? Yeah. Like, that's a pretty big gap. So obviously the people in Irma are cultivating, bringing up some, some, some, talented work ethic and or kids that are talented and giving him a little bit of work ethic because he I mean he was playing while in Winnipeg. Yeah, yeah, there's quite a few. He's down in Moose Jaw, but yeah, like, uh... Moose Jaw. Who am I thinking about in Winnipeg?

McLennan. McClellan. McClellan. Connor. Yeah, right, right, right. Connor. Yeah, same, same kind of area, like in Wainwright. It's a little bit different there, a little bit bigger, not quite the small town

feel, but yeah, very similar. Like, there's been athletes out of Wainwright constantly, too. Yeah, just back home, again, like Jagger. He played mini sticks and stuff with us growing up the whole time. Like he'd be, it's pretty funny actually looking back. I'd be the goalie, be me and Jags against Carson, Susie, Parker McKay, and then kind of be... And those guys aren't any slow. Exactly.

So he'd be defending them the whole time. So I don't know where he... I don't know where his lack of defense comes now, but... How many siblings you got? I got three. You got three? You're the oldest? Yeah.

Sisters 23 now. Jagger is 16 and Slade turns, Slate is 14, sorry. Is he going to be playing here in Lloyd? Slate's 13, sorry. He is going into, it'll be his second year, ban him this year. So I think the plan will be for him to try out here yet. Try out here. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about your journey. We've spent an awful lot of time talking about Irma and Rinks. You're a guy that started out in Irma, but I mean, you know, just off the questionnaire, error. You go from Irma to Wainwright to Lloyd to, you know, you go a lot of different places. And what was your time like in Lloyd to start with? It was pretty interesting. Moved up here at 14 to play Major AAA, played here three years, and then ended up going off to play Junior A out in West Colonna.

And then got traded from there. would have been my 18-year-old year kind of around Christmas right before Christmas. And then I played in Okotokes so it would have been towards the end of my 19-year-old year, so after Christmas. Let's go back to Lloyd for a second. Yeah.

Could you not live in Irma and just make the drive? Was that not an option? Then it was mandatory then, because we had practice times. I think it was 3.30 or 3.30 in the afternoon. So you would have to miss even more school. I'd end up missing my last class every day because I was going to kid, Scotty.

So I ended up having to miss that class anyways, but just the travel part and mom and dad put enough hours on. Yeah. So it worked out better to move up here. Was that hard for your parents to let you move away at 14? It was. Honestly, I remember talking to them. We didn't really have any anticipation of me making it coming to camp and then had a good enough camp and was lucky enough to make the squad. And then it all just kind of hit pretty quick.

It was, hey, you got to move up and it was figure out schools. It was you got to get going. So it all kind of came pretty quick, honestly, looking back at it. I was just, I got three kids, four and under. And the wife and I literally just got in this argument. She's from Minnesota. And so she's going, our son is not moving away at 14. And I can't remember who we were talking about.

And I said, well, it's a long time off. And it'd have to be, you know, the right kid. You'd have to be, you know, X, Y, Z. And I mean, and then I'm like, and then again, I'm like, if at 14 he's that good, I'm like, I don't know, but I'd have to think about it, right? And she was pretty adamant that we were moving wherever he was moving. So when you said that, I'm going like, oh, she listens to that she's going to be squirming a little bit.

I can just imagine what your parents were doing, even though it's not, you know, what's Irma from here? Yeah, it's only an hour, just over an hour. Yeah, right? Like it's nice and close, close enough, but at the same time to make everything else work. Yeah. What was your first bill it's like? Yeah, so getting into that story, I got a few stories here to tell today, and this will be the first one. And so the first billet I lived with, I won't say his name, but I talked to him earlier,

so he's all good with me sharing this. It was interesting. It was very interesting. The first bill that I lived with, he was a buddy on my team from Bannum that I had met the year before. We knew everyone on there, knew the family really well, so I ended up moving in with him. And, yeah, long story short here, the one night we were sleeping, and he ended up sneaking out. And ended up actually trying to take his life during that sneak out. I woke up the next morning, found out that he ended up actually taking a car,

tried to light it on fire and roll itself, or sorry, roll the car into the river. And it was pretty tough. Like being, I'm still at the house trying to explain to his parents. Like, I don't know where he is. I have no idea. All that stuff. And then his girlfriend at the time had no idea either. So she was kind of freaking out.

I'm freaking out. Everyone's freaking out. So tough, it was a tough start for my 14-year-old, my 14-year-old career for sure. but I think you look back at it you learn some stuff about it I talked to him again today and honestly it was it was like nothing had really changed

we just kind of discussed even today when I talked to him about learning from the situation and hey just understanding different kind of points different things to watch for more or less actually is what we talked about today and I hadn't talked to him in probably two years up until today so yeah that was interesting that one did you talk to him

a boat that night then and why he took him I never did ask him about that. He was in a dark place, so he was kind of going down a bad path a little bit. So I kind of knew the story about it earlier. I didn't get into it too much with him today. I just kind of wanted to reach out and ask if it was okay if I shared it on here. And I said I kind of wanted to tell my story.

Is it okay if I tell what happened this night? It's kind of part of the story. If you're okay with it, I'd like to tell it. Man, that's tough being 14 at somebody else's house, and their son, I mean, what happens after that? Do you stay living there? Yeah, so I actually ended up moving out. I went and lived with Chris Roman Chuck and Ty Carey,

who were on the midget team, lived with them for a little while. It would have been a week or so. Chris was living with his grandparents, so they had had two billets already. So I had to find somewhere else to live, and actually Brian and went and lived with Kenny Morrison. Kenny Moe.

Yeah, Kenny Moe. Shout out to Kenny Moe. Shout out to Darlene. She made the best desserts. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Oh, Sean Newman Podcast likes desserts. She was unreal.

She was famous for raspberry and ice creams. She'd always make us. How did your guys' teams do those years? You played, Ken Lloyd. The first year, we were really good. We ended up losing in the league final to Red Deer, who was also really good. They're usually pretty solid. but the next year we arguably had a better team the next year we just didn't have those kind of key pieces

so we ended up not going as far i think we lost to uh i can't remember who it was we ended up losing to in the playoffs but should have never happened and then the third year same thing we had another good team it just never really clicked 100% and i think we lost the first or second round and actually it was first round my third year we lost the fort sask I can't remember who it was the second year. We lost out too, though. What was it like switching schools? You went to the comp?

So grade nine is when I moved up here. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, right. That's freaking young, man. Yeah, I went to Bishop my first year. And then my second, third year, I went to Kid Scotty. Went to Kid Scotty? Yeah.

Why Kid Scotty? Alberta Curriculum. Oh. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah. So the first year, I would have to take the bus. obviously being living in Lloyd, I took the bus to school. And then actually my first bill, it's like Jody and Darcy Pollard,

Jody was a teacher at Bishop, so it worked out there. It worked out perfectly. The odd day I'd go with him. And then, yeah, the next year I just had buddies on the team that I would drive with to school and Kid Scotty. Because I didn't have my license yet. So made it work. You know, I get, you know, I think you're, I think it's episode 81 today. and you know all the guys I had there's been tons that are that are young when they first leave home

and I always think of the school man like that has to be tough you go in you got new school new teachers new everything you're trying to focus on hockey but I mean it's it's Bannum and I know Bannum's a big year but man it feels young doesn't it feel young right now yeah it was it was really young it was it was tough honestly like there was a few a few guys I mean, your grade 9 playing midgets, so there's a few guys that were kind of receptive to it. I remember Trevor Ballas, our captain, that your Cam Ballas,

it was his younger brother, Trevor, that kind of was one of the buddies at school. And then other than that, like, not many guys really liked you around school. So it was hard that way, definitely to fit in there. Like, I fit in better at the comp than I did in the grade 9 school, which was tough.

But you make it work. It was kind of part of it, I guess. I guess. Yeah. It's just, that's tough. That's a tough, like, you know, you're learning things as you go. But, I mean, geez, in the first, you must have been thinking, like, what have I got myself into in the first, like, year?

Yeah, it was a whirlwind. Like I said, kind of coming from Irma where it's after school, you go play till dark, you mess around with the boys, and just kind of, be a kid kind of coming up here to 14, you go to school, you go to practice, you go work out, you come home repeat it was it was quite a wake up it was quite different um how about bonneville you'd mentioned uh bonnieville is your first taste of uh um a higher level and going there for a month how old were you when you traveled down to bonneville for their playoff run so i turned 15 in

december that year and then it would have been yeah it was march aprilish whenever it was there did you get in a game or two then i did yeah i went up and they were playing fort mac and i got in it would have been game five or six at home. Went up to Fort Mac, watched that game, and then came back the next night, got in in Bonneville. What was that like? I bet you the barn was rocking up in Bonneville back then.

Yeah, it was good. It was packed. I still remember. What was his name? I can't remember our captain then. Kalinsky, Devin Kalinsky, was our captain then. And it just so happened that I went to OT that game. I got put out with him.

He set me up perfect. backdoor, the goalie poke checked me. I still remember that. It still haunts me. I should have buried that one. I still remember it. So Devo, if you end up listening to this, I'm sorry. I should have won that one. We ended up winning the game, which was good, but... You should have wanted sooner. Yeah, absolutely. Why didn't you ever play for Bonneville then? They just carted you through midget? Yeah, I was with them throughout a year there, and then kind of, I don't know, just things

didn't work out up there. I was talking with Spurs Grove and... decided that it was going to be a better fit. Well, Spruce Grove had its claws into your guys's area. Yeah. I mean, everybody, heck, even the Lloyd area, everybody went there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think prior to your season of going there, they'd won back-to-back championships, right?

And I think over like a 10-year span, they've been in the finals, nine of them or whatever it is. Like, it's ridiculous. Pretty storied franchise, for sure. Absolutely, yeah. So it was an no-brainer then when they called and said, hey, you want to be a little bit of them. want to come to camp and you're like yeah yeah pretty well yeah it was it worked out yeah um you you never got taken in the the dub draft then the battle draft no i never did did you uh i always ask the batam draft is a funny thing like i there's lots of guys you never get taking it and then go

on to play really good hockey but it seems like um as time goes on it becomes a bigger and bigger thing uh with social media and everything do you remember being heartbroken or thinking or about it? Did you pay attention to it at all? Yeah, I was paying attention. I had a few guys off our Bannon team goal like Jetland Houcher. Oh. Colton. Do you know Colton Anderson that man? Yeah, he played with us in Hillmore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he went. Springer, Lynn Springer, obviously. Brody Pollard actually got drafted. I think that's it. So there's a few guys off the team, so I was paying attention a little bit that way. I hadn't really talked to many guys before, like many scouts, talked to a couple and they just kind of said, yeah, maybe, maybe not. Like we might.

never ended up happening i remember the day i was a little bit devastated like kind of takes a chunk out of you but at the end of the day it wasn't meant to be yeah did it fire you up at all it did yeah it actually it bugged me quite a bit like right there i was like okay well i'm going NCAA then that's easy yeah and then kind of carrying on with the midget career i ended up getting listed by victoria and they wanted me to come up there and i just never never really interested me i was always interest in the school route so uh victoria refresh i can't think of their the royals the royals yeah Victoria would have been a nice spot yeah not bad not bad at all I mean a long ways from home I guess you get to west calana that's a pretty nice spot too

yeah I can't complain there um before we carry on with your hockey we got we got to talk about ball for a second here because I mean while you're playing all this hockey uh I'm seeing any off fair like uh grew up playing competitive fastball in town i was never a baseball guy my family always played fastball had brothers win nationals uh get picked up by teams to go to nationals i myself won westerns a couple of times like we were ingrained in fastball and so when i heard you um played for team canada and won nationals and stuff maybe we could just talk about that for a few minutes yeah absolutely so was it all in irma yep all of it we won all of our titles with our So it was interesting.

We had the same crew kind of from it would have been five, six years old. Whenever we started, it would have been mite is what we called it back then. Yeah, I think that's what we called it. Yeah, might might be able to midget. But anyways, yeah. They'll have those name changed, I'm sure, very, very shortly. Yeah, it won't be proper. You can't call somebody squirt.

No, no. But anyways, yeah, we had the same crew. Like a lot of the same guys have already mentioned earlier that were on all these teams that we played all the way up. And then as hockey kind of got in the way, we lost Parks, like Parker McKay and Carson Sousy to that. And then even now to the day, we have off of our teams from even back in Bannum, we would have kind of the core of those Bannum teams, I would say, like the four or five from our

Bannum team that we're still together playing senior now. Yeah. So there was Carson Sousy and Parker McKay and all them guys used to play fastball as well growing up. Yeah. And all you guys just used to steamroll every team in the league. What was the league? We never did do a league. We've played in the men's league a little bit.

It would be the past five years here or so. You still playing that? Yeah. Who are you playing with? Irma. We saw a team. Men's team? Yeah.

Do you guys go to nationals and things then? Yeah, we haven't been to nationals the last few years. We've went to Worlds tournament. It's called ISCs. Okay. So we've been there the last two or three years now. Where's the world is that? It kind of goes all over.

over like last year was in green bay uh the year before i can't remember where it was it was in ontario uh i don't remember the name of the town yeah it kind of it rotates all over the how did you guys do a world uh we the first year we went we won the second division so how many how many divisions here there's two okay so a and b yeah pretty well yeah so the first year we we went we won i c twos and then last year i didn't end up up going the boys did really well though I think we ended up finishing top 20 or something around there don't quote me how many teams we talk uh there be probably 60 some at least 60 some I would say so yeah holy that might be a high ball in it I'm not 100% sure so many teams as you

want from Canada or do you have to play you have to qualify yeah so who do you guys got to qualify against you got to win win Canada or no we go to there's a tournament in Colonna that we go to every year. Okay. It's kind of a qualifying tournament. And then from there, if you do well enough and if you want to, you can go to ISCs. So you get the top from everywhere. Like there's a few teams in the world tournaments that have the top guys from all over the world.

That it's really like, it's really a four team tournament. Like they have sponsorships and they have like a million dollar sponsorships that they pay guys to come from all over. So you have guys from the men's team in Argentina playing with the men's team from New Zealand, Australia, like you have the top, top end, and then kind of from there. Then you got Irma. Yeah, then you got Irma. Just swinging away. So you guys just take a bus down there, or do you fly?

What do you do? Fly, yeah. How many days is that? It's a week-long tournament. Starts on a Monday? It starts on Saturday, and then it can go, or sorry, it starts on Sunday, and it can go all the way to the following Sunday. But the way it works out, like, you can go down there and you can end up getting six, seven,

eight games or you can play three. So if you end up losing the wrong ones, you end up dropping down the division. And if you don't win in the BICs 2, then you're donezo. Or if you win and continue on into IC1, like you end up winning. So you're in the winning bracket, no different than it would be in any other sport. You end up losing the wrong game. Like, you could get three games out of it. So I'm curious now.

grown men flying down to Green Bay playing a game a day? Yeah. What do you do after the game? I didn't go to Green Bay last year. The boys did though. They went to a Packers game. They were all over the place down there. I don't know if I could say on air what they all did.

Well, then you're just, you're saying what I'm thinking. I'm saying what I'm thinking. I'm going a game a day with a bunch of grown men. I mean, it'd be like taking your senior hockey team down to a tournament and wherever. I mean, Florida or, I don't know, going over to Europe or something to playing a game a day, while the boys are going to play at night. Yeah, the boys play. Yeah, they're going to have some fun.

Yeah. No, it's a blast. And that's what we do. Going back to the league thing that we were talking about earlier, there is no real league that we play in. It's all tournaments. Yeah. So like I mentioned, we go to Colona. We go to Saskatoon.

There's one in Calgary. We host one. We've been kind of all over. You know, now that you're saying that, like, growing up, that's the way we were. We played in the men's league. I think it was by the time we were Peewees for sure we were playing in the men's league. Yeah. Because there isn't enough teams around to sustain a competitive league.

So how many teams do you guys see then in Alberta? Growing up, I mean. Growing up, there was us in Calahoo. We're really, and Bluffton had a team, but it was us in Calahoo. and then now it's us and it used to be the Lloyd Dodgers. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you ever heard of them or know of them a little bit. And now they're Grand Prairie Pirates.

So it's us and them kind of head to head. How you guys make out against them? Well, obviously, D.C. Honestly, we could play them 10 times and it'd be 5'5. Really? Yeah, we have some heated games. It gets pretty intense. It's good.

It's competitive, really competitive with them. Hmm. What was playing for your team Canada like? So that was a blast. That was actually, we had Nationals out in Fredericton. It would have been the weekend before Trials. So we kind of got to know a little, like a few of the guys out there just at Nationals, and then went to camp, got to know them quite a bit better.

So by the time we flew over there, we had from our midget team, or sorry, was it a midget or junior? We had junior, our junior team, we had myself, Stephen Norman, Parker McKay, Carson Sousie, Brett Larson, and Taylor Shabbata. So six of us that went and played on the national team after that. And we had met quite a few guys kind of through the nationals and passed and just throughout that we had known enough. So we had quite a tight crew going over there, but it was pretty cool to go over there with five guys from your own team.

Like I ended up, we actually went to Argentina, and me, Parker, and Carson were rooming together, so it was pretty cool. What was Argentina like? I wouldn't go there again, honestly. It was kind of dirty. like it was yeah it was dirty a little bit grungy we didn't get to see many of the actual sites like it was we were there for a reason

whereas if we talked to the parents they went out and did all the tours did all the all the fun stuff we kind of were condemned a little bit to our hotel guys got sick over there and it was it was interesting how long were you over for uh two weeks for two weeks something i got yet how many games do you play there that's a good question i don't even remember there was a round robin and then we ended up

hip rained so hard we ended up playing australia to go to the medals or yeah we ended up playing australia to go to the metal game i'm going up losing to them three two uh i can't remember how many games we ended up playing just amazing ball players yeah it was pretty cool i could play japan we played all them so it was interesting what would it what sticks out about when you look back at playing the different countries, you know, what was the best team? Who was the best team first off? I honestly thought Japan was. And what was it about Japan and fastball? What just set them apart? Just their hands and everything's so strategized with what they do. Like, it's, it's exactly what you see on TV. Like, everything they do kind of has a purpose, it's strategy.

It's, it just seemed like they were ahead of everyone. Argentina ended up beating them in the final. But I would have taken Japan. So it wasn't that they had like four guys who could just absolutely crank the ball. No, not really. It was just their whole team. They're very similar. It wasn't one guy you had to watch out for necessarily. I can't remember even the name.

I wouldn't be able to pronounce it anyway. But they had one guy that could rope the ball. But other than that, it wasn't overly powerful. It wasn't overly. Like I said, it was just strategic the way they were hitting, like place, their defense. All that stuff was just, it seems to be mildly. ahead. Was there a team there that just had like four giants that just walked up?

Mexico. Mexico? Yeah, Mexico for sure. I got to tell this one too. So Stephen Norman, one of our good buddies, he's pitched with us since it'd be Bannum or so. Probably the furthest home run I've ever seen hit. We're in Argentina, this nice ballpark. I don't know how deep it'd be.

anyways i'm standing out short stevo throws this flat lifter and it's this monster mexican like he's a big dude and swings hard like hard hard hard he gets a hold of this thing i i swear to god it would have went 400 feet had to him and he turns around like if you can picture it he's throw him finishes his pitch turns around and yells up our whole infield looks at him we're like yeah that's that's way up like that's that's not coming back it's still a joke we bugging about it all the time still that that I still don't think I've seen a further home round hit yeah that ball's gone yeah that's that one's gone it was it was funny it was a good story did you uh obviously got the word the maple leaf there yeah we did it was unbelievable

keep that you got that hanging on wall so yeah it is it's on the wall downstairs actually That's one thing in my life It'd be cool to wear the leaf Whether it's hockey ball Croquet I don't care Right If I could find a way

Yeah Represent your country So like Over the two weeks You're playing all these different These different countries But it was business Like it was

Do you have company Company Country representatives And with you guys As far as like Taking us around Yeah you bet Yeah yeah we did

I remember we went downtown kind of was later at night we went downtown to grab a bike kind of as a team just to do a little bit of touring and we ended up, we got down there and we got told we had to leave because they're like, you can't be down here right now. We're like, what's gonna happen? She ended up having to get back

on the bus and go home but it was, yeah, it was an interesting time. Honestly, the more we talked and more stories come up to them, I'm not even I wouldn't have even thought of off the top of my head just kind of bringing back memories I guess. Yeah, no, that's cool. I mean you just just you're the no I shouldn't say this because there's probably a guy I've had on who's played ball who we didn't talk about it but you're the first guy I think that's played for team Canada that's for sure in ball that is and that just doesn't happen that often to go to Argentina of all places is an interesting spot too yeah worlds I mean that's that's pretty cool it's funny the Mexicans are the ones that are smashing the ball who all

were the countries over there like was all the country not obviously all the countries but did you play like 12 games then over a two weeks span yeah we played quite a few it would be around that yet i don't remember exactly i don't want to be a liar on here so yeah yeah it'd be around that though was there a team then you're like oh man you know we're going to play the germans or something they're gonna be getting and then they showed up and you just walked them was there any team like that um not really like not that i can think of off the top of my head i remember going to play argentina that was a fun game. I think we ended up losing 2-1 or 1-0-0 or something,

but just being in their home park. The park was packed. What do you mean? How packed? Are we talking 1,000 people? We talking 300. There would have been 5,000 or so. 5,000 for a fastball game.

It was packed. And they're playing music the whole time. Everyone's dancing. It was good. It was a lot of fun. That's a ballpark number. Like, it would be around that, though. Yeah, but still, that's cool.

I mean, how many games did you play fastball where there was, you know, parents? Right? Yeah. Like, I mean. And grandparents. And grandparents. Yeah.

Let's talk about Spruce Grove. So you go to, you're playing hockey. You go to Bonneville first. And then you come back. Obviously Spruce Grove's got, you know, they're sucking up every piece of talent from, you know, Irma, Wainwright, that kind of area. Like, everybody seems to go, they're Lloyd for that matter, right? Like, there's a ton of talent that left this area and went that way. What was Spruce Grove like?

It was interesting. We got up there. Actually, I went up there with Jetlin Houcher. We had went up there. We had played together for, would have been the two years together midget before and went up there, kind of were told a few things that we were looking good. Things were going to end up happening and never did. But no, it was interesting. It's a good franchise. It was a story franchise. Still is. But it was interesting for sure. You end up playing there for part of a season though, no? Yeah, we started the year there. I remember the date.

It was October. You can let guys go before October, end of October, somewhere in there. So they ended up letting me and Jetland go same day. So we ended up coming back to Lloyd and playing midget there. So when does all the shenanigans happen? Like the whole story. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that actually happened the night before. So we had gotten letting go during the day. me and Jett both the same time I had actually switched billets because I was allergic to cats so I'll start this over went up there moved in with a family up there ended up having to switch because I was allergic to cats so this other this other dad uh single dad or single man I guess I should say he'd already had two billets in the house three billets in the house at the time so we thought it was all good they sent me there just to live there for the meantime kind of

I'd been there for a week or so yeah they'd sent me there just until they'd what they had said was found me another billet ended up getting let go like I had said so was there we uh obviously the night of getting let go

you're gonna have a few pints so we had a few drinks and stuff that night and then ended up he knew the assistant coach Jay Ringrose he knew him so he had told me that he had he had some insight onto onto what what kind of was going on with spruce and their story of why i was getting let go and all this stuff he said he had some kind of background info

so we ended up having playing cards whatever having a few drinks ended up upstairs uh he ended up asking me to go to his room myself being 16 whatever i was at the time uh yeah sure whatever yeah let's do it so went in there ended up drinking another bottle he ended up uh trying to molest me uh wouldn't let me wouldn't let me leave the room uh so long story short i don't know how detailed i need to get but uh so ended up ended up happening there i ended up dodging finally he wouldn't let me out of the room i dodged him pushed him off ran downstairs to my buddy who was down there on the team and he was big into the uh what is it garage band where you can make your own music so uh he recorded me that night trying to explain to him what happened and then kind of from there

ended up having to go to court and everything with that and so yeah that was that was interesting to say the least so you've listened to the recording then obviously Yeah, actually, I had to in court, which was, it was tough. I don't want to pry. No, please do. I'm here to tell it. Huh. Do you remember the night then?

I do, actually, yeah. Like, up until, I can remember we're playing sociables downstairs. And for those of you that don't know sociables, you grab a card out of the deck, and each card will have rules, right? So he was putting different rules in that at the time we thought were kind of funny. Like, it was just us. There was four of us, five of us downstairs. He wanted to come down. He ended up actually, like, put rules in where, like, you'd have to take pieces of clothing off and all this weird shit.

Sorry, I shouldn't say that. You can swear. It's not a big deal. I'll get scolded by my mother. That's about it. Sorry, Mom. So looking back at it, like, there's a lot of tell-tale signs. But at the time he just...

No, you're heartbroken. You don't know what's going on. You're having fun. You're trying to relax. So you're trying to... And he knew the weakness. He knew I wanted to crack the squad. And he told me he was buddies with this guy.

So he had some insights. So everyone else went to bed. And he's like, hey, come up here. We'll have a few more drinks. So I ended up going up there. At that time, I was already in my boxers as everyone else was. Like, just weird stuff like that. Like, it was just, yeah.

Like, looking, back there's definitely signs to it but like you said kind of in the in the moment you don't know what to do you're just having fun with it how old is he gay I don't know he would have been 30-ish like 35-ish around that ballpark school teacher really at one of the schools yeah he was a hockey coach too your parents just want to kill him yeah that was one of the one of the toughest parts because you have to go through all the court hearings and all to testify and all that stuff. So one of the times that we went to testify and tell my story, and he kind of tells his side, we walked into the courtroom and we're sitting there,

and the doors were shut so you couldn't get in yet. So we're sitting on the one side over here. He's walking in through the door here, and you can't get into the doors yet. So he's got his lawyer and his whatever it was, sister, girlfriend, whatever you want to call her. they were all sitting here sorry they were all standing here we're sitting here and mom got up and went over to him and started screaming at him and again like i can't blame her can't blame anything that they would i i couldn't imagine like looking back at it now it's i i couldn't imagine what

they had to go through through it all did you how long did it take like for it all they could go tell your buddy you record yeah downstairs yeah pass out or what i actually i didn't even end up going to sleep that night. I went downstairs, told him, we left the house, went for a drive, drove around, we came back, he was asleep. So we went to bed, or sorry, we went downstairs. We just bullshitted until the morning. We got up. I'm like, I guess you can't even call it, got up. We carried on, I guess, and I ended up just driving home the next day. Now, when you say, I don't know, I don't know, I apologize if I'm prying. I want to say that 10 times over.

I want you to, I want to be able to tell this story. Like when you say molest, you mean like, like touching you molest? Or just wouldn't let you leave the road? So both. Like we ended up,

we were on the bed talking. He ended up, like we were sitting kind of side by side on the bed almost. He ended up eventually just out of nowhere. We were bullshitting and he was, like he was kind of talking about how

blah, blah, blah, you could do this. They want you to do this. They want you to do this. They want you to do this. So it did start off kind of the proper way a little bit. And then out of nowhere, he put his hand on my right thigh and looked at me and was like, to be, I don't know how detailed I should go, whatever you feel comfortable with.

So yeah, he puts his hand on my thigh and kind of started to slide it up and looks at me and says, to be 100% honest, I want to blow you right now. So I kind of turned my head and I looked and I just laughed. I was like, yeah, whatever. And then he tried to roll on top of me, put his hand over. the underwear but tried to grab it so then i kind of clued into what was happening so i rolled off the edge of the bed tried to get out and run through the door here to get out he jumped off his side and he was he was a big man like he was five seven but he would have been around 300 pounds so he's standing here

i'm standing here trying to get out and he wouldn't let me out and he kept trying to kiss me kept trying to kiss me so i kept turning my head turning my head turn in my head and finally it just clicked the one time he tried to kiss i remember i went under his arms went under his arms pushed him into his dresser open the door and ran downstairs you're 16 i can't remember if i was 16 or 17 i think i was 16 at the time yeah when you're when you're on your ride home the next day when you get home do you tell your parents i called them immediately i called them And they were obviously in shock too. They didn't know what to say, what to do, as neither did I.

But yeah, called them, called Jason McKee, who was the coach at the time in Spruce, kind of let him know that, hey, this all went down. And you should probably get the rest of the boys out of the house. And then, yeah, that was kind of the means of telling people. Did any other guy ever come up and say that had happened? Yeah, actually One of the, I can't remember where he was He used to live out in B.C. somewhere

And someone said he used to have like weird wrestling matches with him too So there was some There were some weird stories And then actually my ex-girlfriend right now Who I was with at the time She got a hold of me It would have been

Three, four years ago now That have you ever seen those creep catchers online? Yeah Like those guys that'll lure people in and then they get their face and all that stuff and kind of expose them so they caught him doing that to the same thing it was a young boy that he was trying to meet up with that they ended up walking up to his uh walking up to his vehicle and had him on camera like hey robert you're looking for this guy right and yeah like yeah so it's obviously didn't really help with me coming out and telling it but

how was how hard how hard was it to like i mean i assume to go public with that must have been difficult to let other people know, or was it easy to go to court? I don't know. That was by far the toughest thing I've done in my life, like hands down. Going through that and getting grilled by his lawyer, all that stuff. It's exactly like you see on TV. Like you're standing up there.

My crown prosecutor would ask me questions. His lawyer would ask me questions. So it was exactly like that. Like their big thing was they tried to plead that I was gay because I was walking around with my boxers on and all this stuff. So it was that part was in my eyes by far the hardest of the whole situation. Granted, the night did it happen. But, yeah, that part of it was very difficult.

Fuck, man, that's tough. Yeah, it was the weirdest thing, too. It would have been that day that I'd, tweeted back at you and said, hey, let's do this. That was the day that I started to search something on Google that was very similar to his last name. And his last name ended up coming up on my Google, so I had read it, and I was just kind of going through it again. And it was almost like, you were talking about almost like a clarity moment earlier. That's exactly what it was. Like, I don't know if my brain shut it out or what, but I was reading it all through again and just

rereading some of the stuff that I saw the judge was saying and all that stuff again. It was just almost like a clarity. It was like, holy, wow. I don't even remember that stuff being said. And what stuff are you... Just the way the judge was saying. She had mentioned that being a 16-year-old hockey player, she would have thought that it would have been aggression. Like, he would have needed dental work if this actually happened and all this stuff.

So just rereading that and, I guess, bringing it all back up to, in a way, kind of close it off, if that makes sense. Have you ever talked to, like, a professional boss? Yeah, I did big time. When I was here in Midget, so the year I came back, I came back here again, Lloyd. So this... This happened before because it was October. Right, right, right.

And then you get like going, you come back to play your last year in Midget, your grade 12 year. It would have been my 11. Grade 11 year? Yeah. So, yeah, then dealing with that, yeah, I did. I did talk to professional about it for quite a while. Holy shit That's enough to make your skin crawl

Yeah I'm just now kind of coming to terms With being able to talk about it a little bit more So Well I appreciate you sharing it I greatly appreciate you having me on here I'm ready to kind of tell the story And hopefully it's not too vulgar

But I don't know I think you know I'm being a parent now Um One of the things you worry about Is your kid's safety And

When I joked earlier about you being and moving away from Irma to Lloyd, I mean, there's a reason why parents get nervous about their young kids going out and being under other people's houses, not that the houses you stayed in beforehand at that age were bad houses, just that you're under different people's, you know, you can't see what's going on at all times, and you have to trust your children and the people that are going to be looking over your children and have the best in mind for them or the best interests form. them and I was saying earlier like I the lane family that I stayed with shout out to the lanes

they were like a second family they were unreal to me like I just you know guardian angel washing over you what have you they put you in the right spot and you get three years of the best family life that you can imagine right like it was it was awesome so to hear you know what you went through at such a young age man like that's that's tough like you're two stories now are like that's enough i'm i mean your parents must have had hesitations the rest of time letting you go anywhere yeah they did and kind of a shout out to the next bill at family i guess it would be it was amanda furg powell here in lloyd minster they were unbelievable they're family friends so we knew them going in so that kind of made things a little bit easier but definitely definitely coming back

that year was a challenge i guess would be the easiest way to put it but Actually, I was going to quit hockey, to be completely honest. I just had so much going out inside my head that not many people really knew about. So I kind of, I was at a point where I was making some dumb decisions as a hockey player. Ended up sneaking out to one night. Went to a party in Vermillion with a buddy on the team. We ended up getting caught. Coach sent us home for the weekend.

So that was kind of my turning point. know what? I'm just causing more harm right now than I am good, honestly. So I was at home for the weekend. I was ready to just, I need some time off. Ended up talking with my coach and my best friend, Parker, Mackay. Ended up moving back to Lloyd with Ferg and Amanda Powell, and then Parker actually moved in with me there and kind of helped me through the situation the best he could. Did the guy get charged? Yeah, he did, pretty minimal, but he got 45 days. He got 45 days. another part that kind of bugs me. You got 45 days in jail and then a two-year probation or something along those lines.

Like it was very minor. Slap on the wrist. Exactly. So that part really bugs me. I think that part will bug me forever, honestly. But again, where were we? I lost my train. No, just dealing with it and you're wanting to quit hockey and then sneaking out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So ended up, yeah, we were at that point where I was just, I was done with it. Like I was, I need to take care of myself a little bit here, I think. And then I ended up talking with them, moved back up here, ended up kind of carrying on. And that was, the rest of that year, my brain wasn't really there. And then the following year, I went out to West Colonna to start my junior career, went out there.

And again, it took me, because the court hadn't finished yet. Like, it was a year or so until we actually got the sentencing and all that stuff. so it was all never really left that whole time i guess if that makes sense like it was all in my brain so i was out there for the first half of the year plus and again brain wasn't really where it should have been looking back like it's it's hard to say or hard to hard to picture but definitely wasn't where it needed to be i don't know i don't think so i'm going so that happens you come back and then you're not living with your family you're living with another family right and then to go to West Cologne and the first thing like man I would have wanted locks on my door almost right

like it was it was uncomfortable and it had to like going into somebody you know if you've never lived in a billet house or somebody else under somebody else's rules the first like i don't know for different people it's different amount of time but for the first week for sure yeah it's a feeling out process yeah there is a nervous energy in you that you just you know even with the best houses you just like You're feeling it out. Yeah, you have to. Right? Because you don't know how, you know, and every month that goes on, even in the best ones, you get a little more comfortable.

But it still isn't your parents. No, exactly. So, I mean, in your case, to have you, you know, your head is in it or is on different things, fuck, that makes complete sense to me. Yeah, and then, like my bill at my Mount Colonna, she's the same way that you were talking about the lanes earlier. Like, unbelievable. Like one of the best cooks, like best ladies, works her ass off to provide for everyone. Like it was incredible.

She'll be at our wedding too. Like same situation. Like it was that angel that you're talking about. But yeah, there was a lot of devils before you got the angel for sure. Ah. What was West Cologne like? Let's be honest. Colona had to have been half decent.

I mean, if you're going to pick a spot out in B.C., Colona is maybe the spot. It was incredible, honestly. Like, the guys out there were really good. Team was good. We were good. Coach was good. Everything out there was a good setup.

Honestly, I wouldn't be able to pick a bad thing about it. How'd you guys do? Like, were you, oh, man, that is some neck cracking. Got to do that still from my head. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, from the concussion. Yeah, it's still, I never was able to before, but now I can. I don't know. It's like a relief almost

It was a bad hit No it was in ball It was in nationals That's how you got your concussion Yeah Yeah we hosted nationals in 2014 In Irma Yeah

And what the hell happened I was in the dugout actually So picture this Any of the ball players Right-handed batter We're on the third base side Yeah We're in the dugout

He gets a change up thrown to him He twisted hard enough on it That it came and hit me in the side of the head. So I was talking to my buddy here, and I couldn't really see you. Like, I was leaning this way to be able to try and see. And out of nowhere, this thing came and hit me up. I got turned enough that it hit me in the back right side of the head.

But then I fell and hit my left side of the head on the cement in the duggle. Oh, man. So that was the start of that. I wasn't able to play my 20-year-old year in Okotokes. Have you been, like, is it still buggy then? Yeah. Like, it's, it's not as much headaches now as it is just dealing with a lot of the, again, to go into some more stuff, dealing with the anxiety and all the stuff that it's kind of brought on. How so?

Just the uncertainty of things, I think, is where it kind of all started. Like, after hockey stopped, I didn't know what I was going to do. So just the constant second-guessing, everything with that, I think, is kind of a lot of where that came from, honestly. Can't let you in on a secret? Yeah. None of us know what we want to do. After you finish hockey, I'm sure every hockey player is gone. Exactly, same story.

I don't know what I want to do. It's a helpless feeling. You've done it for, I mean, when did you start playing hockey? How old were you? I would have been three. Yeah, I was, I think, two and a half when the skates went on. And I ended at 26, so I was a year older than, well, I mean, and then he played senior. But, I mean, I ended pro hockey at 26.

Then you come home, and you're supposed to just, oh, now you're supposed to go pick a career, What do I do? Oh, that's brutal. Yeah, exactly. So I think that's where a lot of it came from. And then just, I'll be completely honest like it was. It was depressing. Like, I was in depression for a little bit dealing with,

because I had a scholarship that I wasn't able to go on. Where did you have a scholarship to? Alaska. So I wasn't able to play my 20-year-old year or take that scholarship in Alaska. So dealing with all that was a lot on top of the head, too. So just, I don't know. if it was just my brain would never shut off and it never really allowed itself to heal with trying to think of all that stuff or I don't know honestly so you still play competitive ball though yeah

so you can run you can be dancing around you can dive for balls but you can't take body contact and hockey yeah so even even with playing ball like if I dive or something like that like in a situation if I bounce my head enough like it'll I'll see star still. Yeah, I think it's to the point where it's a little bit mush, so anything like diving or anything trying to get up again. How's your memory? It kind of takes me a little bit.

Not very good. Like, long-term memory's okay or long-term memory sucks or just all memory. Long-term's not very good. Like, there'll be stories where guys will be talking about the old days or whatever it might be, and I'll, yeah, yeah, you bet. Yeah, that was fun. Like, I don't remember a lot of it. I don't remember certain things, but not everything.

Like I said, even earlier when we were talking about Argentina, like just even talking about it, I guess, brings up different things that I would have never been able to kind of put together before. Huh. And that is unfortunate. A ball smacked down the, I know exactly, like, I hate it being in the, because that's all it is, is one change up, the guy swings for the fence and twists on it.

Yeah. That sucks. Yeah. was pretty unfortunate. Going from West Colonna, when you were playing, what was the BC, you play in the BCHL and then you come back to the AJ. What did you think of the two different lanes? I thought BC, like, they're both, they're both unbelievable, obviously.

I thought BC was a little bit softer then, like it was more, more skill, I would have said. Not that the AJ wasn't or isn't, but it was more of a, it would be like a Euroleague, almost in my print like you know you know what i mean there like it's i do that's still funny though you got you got that kind of yeah that that skills i guess you'd say and then you come back here and it's kind of more farm boy mentality a little bit a little meat more meat and potatoes here yeah yeah that's a good way to put it yeah what was that you enjoyed the ocotoxone why actually before i get to that did you ask for a trade out of clona or were they looking to movie at a clona were looking to move me.

Yeah. A lot of the same. Like I said, my brain was never in the right spot there the whole time. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed every minute of it. I don't think that I truly was my hockey player self after all of that Robert's stuff. I don't think, like, looking back, like, I, yeah, I don't know. I think it hindered me a little bit that way.

I don't know if I was just never able to get my mind off of it or what the case was. but tricky to the core yeah i guess it did yeah and i tried to hide it long enough that it maybe if i hit it long enough it would go away never was really the case looking back don't get me wrong there was flashes where i felt good and then it just it would be very inconsistent and i was never able to control it if i don't know if that makes sense like it was there'd be games where I was really good and then there'd be games where it's just mediocre kind of thing in my eyes

so I don't know if that was it or I don't know if I'll ever put a finger on it completely but that would be a guess anyway but anyways yeah they wanted to move me so I went to Okotok's, went there we ended up losing in the first round to Olds which we never should have done. We had a good team in Okotoketowks

but ended up losing first round there And then, yeah, that summer was the concussion. You got me thinking back to this Robert guy again. Yep. I'm trying to put myself, and I hate to bring it back up again, and I know you don't like talking, or, you know, not in talking about it, but was it the fear that stuck with you, like, of what he was trying to do? Like, was it just like a, like that sense of like an older man trying to, like,

control and just like the helpless feeling of like how did I get myself into this? Yeah, there's a ton of that. Like a lot of the fear situation that you're talking about and there's a lot of regrets. Like what are you doing going there? What are you doing in this situation? So you're hard on yourself. Yeah, big time. And then honestly, a lot of it was shame too.

Like you hear about all these guys kind of coming out with their story and that's a lot of it too is you don't want to seem, I guess the right word would be. You don't want to seem weak. coming out with it. I don't think you sound weak coming out with it. And that's kind of where it tricks you in your own brain is it's... Yeah, the inner... You want to be this macho guy.

You want to be this hockey player, right? So to be able to show those vulnerabilities is... It's tough, and I think it still is even talking to you about it. I'm sure you can hear the shakiness in my voice a little bit. Like, it's still, it's hard to do. I don't think it'll ever be easy. But I think it's a good spot to start. It's time it comes out.

It's eating at me long enough. And hopefully this is the part that just kind of shuts that door. Well, once again, I'll say it again. I appreciate you talking about it. I listen to you. And, man, I just, it's, I can't imagine being in that situation and how I would deal with it. But it's 16, 15, 16. 16.

16. 16. Yeah, at least. I just see 16-year-olds right now, and I'm 34. A 16-year-old isn't getting around me if I don't want them to get around me. I guess that's the way, if I put myself in a situation where you're trying to wrestle a 16-year-old. How many 16-year-olds do you know that can maneuver a 34-year-old? That's kind of where I had mentioned earlier.

Like, he wasn't a tall guy by any means. Like he would have been 5-6-ish, 5-7, but he was 300 pounds. He is a big dude. It makes me sick to my stomach, and I know it wasn't. Guys like that, I know some people out in the old farms, we'd have them dispatched awfully quick. We have quite a few people that have brought that up that I've talked to, whether their kids have told them their story or whatever the case may be,

that have came up and offered that. Yeah, well, I mean, once again, I appreciate you to tell. I think it's a good thing for, for parents and kids, you know, kids to hear that are going to go off at a young age, you know, you got to take care of yourself. You got to use your brain. You got to think about every situation you're putting yourself in, whether you're 16 or you're 40, right? Like, there's, there's some not good people out there in the world. Yeah, there is. And I think a lot of it too is for me and myself, just kind of understanding that I needed to take care of myself.

Like if that makes much sense here, I'll kind of go into that a little bit more. But just going back to where my brain was is I don't want to sound kind of conceited, but I was one of the better guys. So it was something that I kind of always just tried to shrug off or shrug off. Sorry, it was always here, like, let's go do this. We'll do this. I'll do this. Like on the ice, if that makes sense.

Yeah. So I was almost trying to overcompensate. Like I was never, never, I don't know the word I'm looking for. never really happy with myself throughout that all. Just the situations that I put myself in, all that. So, like, and I still, I still, I try not to beat myself up over it, but, like, even talking about it now, it's still the situation is like, why, what are you doing? Kind of thing.

So I, I think that's where a lot of it comes from. Like, I just, I constantly tried to put on a face for everyone, if that makes sense. Yeah. Like, throughout the team, my coaches, everyone, it was all. always put on a face like you're here to do a job let's do the job then when you go home then you can start to think about it again so i never really really took care of myself if that makes sense yeah it does so i think now it's just to the point where dealing with that the story at the start dealing with the robber stuff dealing with the concussion i think it's time i think it's

time that i finally realized and just growing up that it's time to take care of me a little bit well I think what you're talking about is bang on. I mean, you've got to take care of yourself. Because if you aren't taking care of yourself, then other people around you feel that. And you can affect all the other people around you. Well, especially now coaching, right? Like, now I'm in the spot where I have to try and take care of 20.

How are you enjoying the coaching? I'm loving it, honestly. Love it. I found a new respect for the coaches that I had in the past for sure. So I just I never really truly realized as a player how much goes in behind the scenes as a player You kind of you show up you do your job you watch video you understand what you're trying to do You go on the ice you do it whereas the coaches are the ones kind of making all the game plans up making all the All the adjustments all that stuff you never really thought of that as a player I never did

So being on the other side now it's a whole new respect it's like holy Did you coach this past year then? Pardon me? Did you coach this past year? Yeah. The Bannam AAA team. With Tapp. Yeah, with Tapper.

And you've mentioned Tapp was your best coach. What was it about Tapp that, well, even now you're working with him. What's it about Kyle Tapp? He brings out the best. Like, it just, he's one of the guys that you won't want to hear it, but you need to. I don't know a better way to put that, honestly. He's not there to be your friend. or he wasn't there to be your friend.

He was there to make you better. And I think that's kind of what's breeding into the IHD side. Not there to be your friend. We're here to make you better. He looks at the world and the game a different way. And that's a lot of fun to coach with too. Now when I listen to him talk about breaking down a game and how he's fascinating.

Yeah, it is. I'm not pumping your tires tap. I know you're listening to this. It's probably a shitting grin on his face. makes for some long nights for sure how about your dad you've mentioned one of the biggest influence on you and was your old man that's your words not my yeah what was it what was it about your dad i think it's just his composure with everything i think that's kind of where i've gotten it from i've actually had quite a few parents asked me like you never get worked up like what's what's that

about and i kind of took that from him he coached me growing up and coached me playing ball and everything so i think the composure side of it from him he's never too work worked up he's while in sports he never is with other things it's a different story but uh just that side of it the composure there's just the way of being able to step back and look at things versus reacting yeah i think that's where a lot of mistakes end up being made is a lot of people react they don't process it so i think taking that from him i've had quite a few conversations with him like we still talk on the phone weekly just about whatever it might be and just being able to take that step back and kind of look at the situation before just reacting and here's what I'm saying and then be like,

oh, I shouldn't have said that. Like, I'm actually thinking this. So I think that part of it helps me a lot with the coaching and then even with the IHD side. And then obviously I'm with the fire department here in Lloyd too. So that part helps. Yeah. The volunteer or like you're a firefighter? Firefighter, yeah, like paid on call.

And then you have 24 hours shifts. I actually have one tomorrow. Really? Yeah. So you go to school for that then? They actually do all the training in-house here in town. So I started that. It'd be a year and a half ago now.

What do you think of that? I love it. Honestly, it's a blast. Like, you get that same team feel that I got when I played with all the guys in the apartment. So I love that part of it. And then obviously being able to help out as much as I can. But I think that helps with that too. It's just being able to step back and look at the situation versus let's jump in here.

Hmm Firefighting Geez I mean Do you ever get Like when was the last call you had Do you guys even get Is it that busy?

I think last It would have been last year I think they said we had around 600 calls 600 calls Yeah Or be around that Yeah So it was

That's busy enough Not not as busy as you would think Like towns like obviously Edmonton like certain stations Like they'll have A ridiculous number but so it kind of varies like the way it'll work is you'll have a 24 hour shift so you're there so for me tomorrow example like I started seven and then I get off seven on Saturday morning yeah so I've

had shifts where I've had no calls I've had shifts where I've had five so it kind of varies based on the day so what's next for you then are you are you leaning towards becoming a full-time firefighter or a full-time coach or just doing what you're doing see I'm loving what I'm doing right now I honestly I don't know 100% like you had mentioned earlier i don't know if you ever do but um yeah i'm enjoying with where i'm at right now with both things and then the skill development side as well so i'm kind of an open book with that i guess i want to i want to talk quickly or longly what the heck am i talking about quickly i do nothing quick on this you've mentioned your most memorable lesson there's a big difference between wanting to win and willing to win who taught you that i actually i just read just read

I read that when I was about 14 back then. And again, I don't know why it never really set in then, but just getting older now, I think that's a meaningful saying. It's pretty powerful playing with guys and now coaching guys. You can see right through it. I think it's pretty easy to see everyone wants to win. Not many are willing to. And those players are special.

Absolutely. Those ones are hard to find. It seems like the rest of it, you're always working towards that. that because everyone wants to. I don't know many people that don't want to. Yeah, I would agree. I also don't know many people willing to. Like you watched that last dance right now, for example.

Oh man, did you want, you want to talk some happy thoughts? Let's put some happy thoughts here. He was a jerk. But he pushed everyone. Yeah, absolutely. God, that was. It's the exact same quote. Like, that's, to me, that's exactly it.

And when he tears up in, like, what is that episode, like, six or six? and he's talking about that. Yeah, I was, I'm on the edge of my couch watching that. Me and the wife were, that wife and I, every Monday night when I'd come out, sit there. Unreal. Like, if I'm not selling this show for you right now, like, you need to get your bean check because, I mean, like,

it is fantastic. Incredible. See what he's done. You know, I was young while I was born in 86, so by the time they won their last championship, I guess I was 12, but back then we had to. two and four or whatever right like we weren't watching the bulls win everything so going back

through that and like seeing some of the stories it came out and steve cur and yeah holy crap and it's unreal it's an unbelievable story it's unbelievable television yeah it is how hard he pushes guys like it's it's incredible and that that quote makes me think of that honestly can you imagine being Krause, the GM, and breaking that team up and not letting him go for a seven. I don't even want to get into it. That bugs me and I had nothing to do with it.

I love Jordan as he's watching the owner say, you know, I gave the coach the option and no, he said he wouldn't come back. Get out of here. Get this out of here. Get this out of here. I don't have time. Yeah, no, I've loved that.

It's been unreal to watch. Six championships in eight years. And in the eight years, The two, they didn't win. A year and a half of it, he took off to go play baseball. He came back and they almost still won. And they almost still won.

And he ran out of gas because he wasn't training. Yeah. He trained himself to be a ball player. How about NHL? They're talking about bringing the 2014 playoff. What do you think of that? I have no idea. There's so many interesting things going on right now

with what they might do and what they could do. It's a one-if game, right? Yeah, absolutely. this happens. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't know. Honestly, it's hard. Are you going to watch?

Absolutely. Are you going to be just like... Absolutely. What happens if they don't allow scrums? What happens if the coaches have face shields on? Would it be considered hockey still? I don't know. I heard that, you know, that heard reports are going to make the players all wear bubbles,

which I mean, I don't know if that's really going to change much. You're still going to get it out there if you have it. I would say so, right? I don't know. Yeah. I was telling you on the way over here, I think they should do, no matter what they do this year, there's going to be an asterisk. Can we agree on that?

No matter what they do at this point, even if they're all best of seven, somebody is going to be peed off because Boston ain't going to win, and they were the top team, and they were favored it and blah, da-da-da-da. So you're going to have an asterisk beside it anyway, so why not have some fun with it? Imagine if you could just, like, for a second, not think about the money, and you could just, like, I don't know, have it world junior style, have them in pools,

and you play around Robin and then you go on to a tournament bracket. That's one I shout out to Kurt Price. Kurt Price had brought that one up when we did that roundtable with him and Bucky. And I was like, geez, that ain't a bad idea. Yeah. Or just have a March Madness bracket, winner take all each game. Everybody's like, well, I mean, you know, right now five verse 12 would be Emmington versus Chicago, right? They're saying, well, Chicago wasn't going to make the playoffs.

They win one game, and they're moving on. I'm like, yeah, that's right. Like the March Madness. Like the March Madness. Like, you don't show up. Like, it would be freaking awesome. That would be interesting. No fans in the stand?

It's going to be weird. That would be so hard to play in. Yeah. It'd be so quiet. Especially playoffs. Like, you're... There's no momentum swings. But in fairness, when they go over and play in the Olympics,

maybe the Olympics isn't a good... But there's got to be games over in the Olympics and World Juniors and stuff. Or it's a little bit dead. There's nobody in the stand. I mean, there's not no one. one in the stands. Yeah. I mean,

no one in the stands. I mean, like, a lot of the game is momentum swings. Like, what do you do? I don't know. Maybe the Oilers

could actually win it this year. McDavid just lights it up in the game. There's nobody cheering. No. They can't go into the tough, you know,

they can't go into Chicago's madhouse and have to deal with that, right? There's not a... That's true. That's true. Yeah, I don't know. There's a ton of scenarios.

All of them would be fine. Let's just get the game back. somehow. I'd take an Emmetton Stanley Cup with an asterisk beside it. That's all I'm saying. I'm sure any O'Eller fan would. Are you an O'Oler fan? I'm a Chicago guy. What? Yeah. Oh, friends off. I've been a cane fan since I was young. Huh. Wow. Okay. Okay. Well, if we meet five verse 12, if that goes through, we're putting a little sideways. Yeah, I'm all in. You know, I, for the listeners who don't know, you're going to be

coaching this year, hopefully with the season, with Tapp and Lyndon Springer, and I figured with Lyndon being on and Tapp being on, I couldn't very well have you guys in on a roundtable and let them banter at you about, you know, not having them be on. So at some point, we're going to have to have all three on the coaching staff of the midgets this year. How's that going? Do you 18s? The U18s, right. I can't, right, that's not politically correct. What's, what's going on in that front? Like, are you guys getting any direction, whether you're going to have a season, a season with fans, are our parents going to be allowed in,

or kids are going to be allowed to move and build it? Is there anything? I honestly haven't heard a bunch. Like, we've been trying to do some recruiting stuff. We actually started before all this COVID even started to happen. So we kind of got ahead of it a little bit there. And then now it's more or less reaching out to guys and making sure that we're kind of still in their plans,

whenever that may be. Like, whether that's Christmas, whether that's regular time, whether that's the new year. Honestly, I have no clue. I've heard a bunch of different ramblings where, like, you're not going to allow fans until after Christmas, or you're not going to... I've heard ramblings of teams of 12, like three-on-three style.

So I have... Right now it's all kind of hearsay. I don't know. Can you imagine... I mean, I'm kidding. Most games in minor hockey, it's not like you have packed buildings, but can you imagine the parents not being able to come in a launch?

what do you do just drop them off and leave maybe some parents would like that maybe some kids would like that that too right like no more crazy dad or mom leaning over the wall just screaming them out might be ideal for kids

yeah you know we were talking about it on the way over here you know the NHL can survive on no fans and whatever else but I was saying you know in the smallest sense in senior hockey like I know most games you don't have a ton of fans. It's not like you're going to

a regular season game and you get a crap ton of fans. That's not the way senior hockey works in small towns. But in the playoffs, that's where he makes some money. At least you earn back some money. Like, you think of allowing no fans into arenas.

The NHL will pull it off because of the TV deals and whatever else. Sponsorship. The AHL, maybe. Because they're subsidized by the NHL. But after that, like the ECHL, not a chance. No.

The WHL, I don't know how they do it with no fans. I think they'd rely a lot on their, on their fan support, too, tickets and all that. Everything's going to have to get changed if they do that. I mean, wow, my goodness. That's a week ago down a rabbit hole on that one for a long time. Yeah. Yeah, like I said, there's a ton of speculations of what's going to happen. I have no idea what actually will, but it'll be interesting to see you.

God, I hope you. guys get to play because it'll be it'd be uh the coaching staff that's been assembled there is just fun in itself it'll be it'll be a good crew well let's move on to the crude master final five five questions um long or short as you want to go and uh shout out to heath and tracy macdonnell sponsors of the podcast so if you could pick your line mates anybody who would you take like in the pros or anywhere yeah anywhere well i feel like i got Gotta go with Patty Kane. We're going to need a goal score or two.

Give us Ovi. Ovi, Kane, Fergus. Yeah. Line off. Yeah. I like it. I like it.

Man, I'll say this about Kane. I'll say this about Chicago. I've watched them twice live back once when, I think it was the year they won in Tampa Bay. They're playing as close to when they won. back when Tampa Bay had St. Louis and La Cavié and Cain was young and St.mcoast was young and Taves was young and all them guys scored in that game. And St. Louis got the winner in the shootout, which is a beautiful one. But Cain is fun to watch. His hands are so fast.

Yeah, he's nasty. His vision, I love it. We took the wife to a game. You know, this is how bad the Oilers were. took the wife who has probably in her life watched can count them on two hands 10 hockey games like I mean and in the NHL she's probably watched three hockey games so I take her but she's a sports girl volleyball very competitive uh shout out to my wife if she is listening to this because she is a very talented athlete and by all accounts a better athlete than me but I take her to an oiler game and they're playing the canock uh playing uh black hawks and the first period the

oilers absolutely dominate the crap out of them i mean like it should have probably been three nothing but it's not it's one nothing and then the second period chicago changes it up and for the next two periods they're up three one it is the boringest game of hockey the oilers can't get it out of their zone my wife looks over me and goes why do they keep doing the same play chicago knows exactly what they're doing and i'm like my wife who has watched three hundred hockey games and her entire life can figure this out. The Oilers can't figure this out. I don't get it.

That is the Oilers. But Patty Kane that night scored the OT winner because the Oilers somehow managed to come back and tie it up. And he made the Oilers look foolish. And he is fun to watch every time. As much as McDavid on the ice is fun to watch, Patty Kane's one of those guys that you wish was Canadian so that he could slide on the Canadian Olympic team.

Every time he's got the puck, something's happening. Oh, yeah. So gifted. Yeah. If you could have a coffee or a beverage with one person, who would you take? Anyone. Current past. That's going to make me think.

My grandpa, actually. Going way off the ropes here. Okay. Yeah, it'd be him. Now that I'm older, I was always around him when I was younger. My old man was gone a lot with work, so I was around him a lot when I was younger. Never really got to when I was older. so I would be interested to sit down with him.

Is he still a lot? No. Passed away. Yeah. He's been gone for a while now. But that would probably be the one, not a celebrity or anything by any means, but that would be the one guy I would. You know, one of the funnest things I get to do on this,

doing this podcast, I've got to interview some guys. Sycomble just comes flying to mine, but Shep's another one from in town here. Just an older generation with their own stories and their own. life lessons and you always I always at 34 you're going to think of me when when I say this every decade goes by and you look at the decade previous and you go man I thought I had it figured out back then I didn't have anything figured out no and you think at 90 or 85 or 70 do you look back at 50 and go I thought I had it figured but I don't and then you know and then you just you can just kind of

see the rabbit hole go back down to when you're 20 and you're like man and so talking to the I don't think it's a good one. I'd be interested. You know, as fun as talking to, I don't know, I always bring up Joe Rogan because I think he'd be a fantastic guy to talk to amazing people. He's got a very interesting story going back. And we, in the Newman family, we're talking about my grandmother. She was the matriarch of the Newman family.

She was an exceptional woman, exceptional woman in the Holmont community, and really wish she would have written a book or something, right? So you could read back through. her thought process. Absolutely. So, no, I think that's super cool. What did your grandfather do? Was he a farmer?

I don't even remember, honestly. I know when I was younger, we helped out on the farm a little bit around home, but. Yeah. During this COVID-19 lockdown, what's been your hobby? What are you been doing? I know I drove by or walked by you with the kids screaming at you while you're cleaning eavesdrops, but I'm assuming you're not doing that every day. No, that wasn't my idea.

Not much. Honestly, it's been with the fire department, whenever that happens with fires, and then simply Netflix. What's been your Netflix other than The Last Dance? Other than The Last Dance. The latest one would be Outer Banks, I think, that I've been watching. Outer Banks? Yeah. I haven't heard of it. It's okay. It's more of a pass-by kind of show. You can watch it to pass some time.

Yeah. Got it on the background for some of the eyes. You can have a nap if you need to, but you can watch if you want to. Have you watched Ozark? Yeah, that's unreal too. Don't spoil it for me. We're halfway through the third season. It's good.

It's really good, too. Right now is a tough time to find something on Netflix that I haven't seen, honestly. Fair. Doing a lot of that, and then, yeah. Hey, get some kids and download Disney Plus, and you can relive every Disney show. I've watched Frozen. I know every song. If you want to see something funny folks, come over and watch me sing every song with the kids

because it's just like, you just know the words now. It's easy. Me and Miles just sing along and try and have a good time. If the borders opened up tomorrow, where are you going? If you didn't have to work, you could just head anywhere. Where would you want to go? Oof. Somewhere hot on a golf trip.

I don't know where exactly, hot, but somewhere hot on a golf trip. Go down to the first. Florida, commandeer Clark MacArthur to get him in on the golf game with Michael Jordan. That's, let's go. I'm in. Yeah. You might lose your house to him, but other than that. I'm not going to bet him much, but it'd be fun to do.

Yeah. No, I don't know where I'd go. It would be somewhere hot with a golf trip, though. You've been out golfing yet? Just twice. Oh, yeah, yeah, right, because we were going to do it there last week and you went golfing. How was it? It was okay.

With all the restrictions or maybe they're, you know. Yeah, it was okay. Trying out some new irons. We're going to get in a new set. So trying to hit the seven and shots where seven shouldn't be hit. But it was okay. Just okay. Wasn't great.

It wasn't terrible. Was it at least nice to be out on the course? Yeah, it was unbelievable. Just to get out of the house, honestly, right now. Yeah, no kidding. But no, it was good. Okay. The last one I got up for you is about your.

fiance because I have learned that I never asked people about their wives or significant others. So the last one is, how did you meet? Because if she's listened to this long, she's going, I didn't even get a shout out. Well, I'm doing it. Here we go. How did you meet your fiance? We actually met summer games. Summer games. Yeah, she was on the zone seven fastball team. I was on the zone seven male team. So we met then and actually. You slide dog you. Yeah, a bus trip down there. I knew a few girls on the team that were playing with her So I kind of got the end from them and then the rest is history Who did she play for?

With fastball Yeah She's kind of played all over with that Like for the summer game she was zone seven Where's she from? McLaughlin McLaughlin You know where that is?

Yeah No kidding. Okay Did you guys win summer games? Yeah So when I was spouting off earlier here before we started But before we started, too, I'm like, yeah, well, I won this and I won that. You've won all that and some.

They got silver, though, so I'll make sure she remembers that. A dig. No. No, I do owe her quite a bit. She's been there through all this stuff, too, all the stories that I've kind of told you about. So she's been, for lack of better term, the rock. And you guys getting married next summer? Yeah, July.

Oh, well, I'd be excited. Where are you going? It would be good. It's here, actually. It'll be at the... What's the... Rolling Greens? No.

What's the big building by the Civic? Exhibition grounds? Yeah, yeah. All right. Stockade, that's the word I'm looking for. Oh, you're looking... Told you, there's a concussion coming back. I don't have a concussion.

I still can't think it's a stockade. It's a stockade, yeah. That's where the ceremony is going to be. Well, shout out to... What's your fiance's name? Alyssa. Alyssa. Well, shout out to you, Alyssa.

you're uh well i've been harassed by a lot of guys you come on and i never bring up their significant others and i'm trying to be better about that so i really appreciate you hopping on tell me your story um i think it's uh i tell you what it was very interesting to hear about at times very difficult to hear about but i think that's what's good to share those stories for people to hear and let let people know what's going on you know out in the hockey world, let alone the rest of the world. So I appreciate you coming on and sitting down with me. I've thoroughly enjoyed this.

Yeah, no, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. It's kind of a platform for me to get the story out. And now being around town, don't be shy, come up and ask. I think it's time. So if you guys want to know anymore, feel free. I'm not shy about it. Don't look at it any different.

Just come up and talk. I'm more than willing to discuss whatever you need to discuss. Or if you have issues, feel free. I've been through it. or if I haven't, I'll find someone that has for you. So I'm here for whatever you need. I really appreciate you hopping on and best of luck. Hopefully you guys get back to hockey and the season starts and you can get rolling again.

Yeah, I appreciate it a bunch. Thanks, Sean. Hey, folks, thanks again for joining us today. If you just stumble on the show and like what you hear, please click subscribe. Remember, every Monday and Wednesday a new guest will be sitting down to share their story. The Sean Newman podcast is available for free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever else you find your podcast fix. Until next time.