Skaters Hit the Ice for Middle School Hockey

There is no ice hockey team in East Brunswick. No wait. Scratch that. There is a hockey team, you just don’t know about it.

After years of playing for travel teams in Princeton, Hamilton, Somerset, Woodbridge and South Brunswick for clubs that have nothing to do with their hometown, a group of middle school students have started an East Brunswick team that plays out of the Arenas at Woodbridge.

“Another father had basically asked me if my son would be interested, he plays for the Princeton Youth Tigers. Then he asked if I’d be interested in coaching.  ‘I said, ‘yeah sure, if you can find enough kids in East Brunswick interested in playing, my son included, then if you asked if I’d be interested in coaching, I’d say, yeah,’ ” said coach Joe Gural.

Not only did the team find enough players to fill out a middle school aged team, but they found enough talent to compete with older athletes. While many of the teams they play against are made up of fifth through eighth-graders, the East Brunswick squad has just three seventh-graders and even one skater who in third grade.

“Bill Thomas, an East Brunswick resident, he did all the leg work,” said Gural. “He sent emails, he found the players, and to my surprise, I can’t believe he found 90 percent of these kids in East Brunswick. On top of that the talent level was through the roof.

The East Brunswick roster is made up of Tyler Gural, fifth grade; Alex Hoshino, sixth grade; Spencer Lee, fourth-grade; Kyle Mandleur, fifth grade; Eddie Sheridan, seventh grade; Bernie Shuravesky, fourth grade; Mike Thomas, seventh grade; Sam Fox, fourth grade; and Tony Thomas, third grade.

From outside of East Brunswick are Christian Osma, a fourth-grader from Edison; Jack Lane, a seventh-grader from South River; Anthony Lane, a sixth-grader from Monroe; Chip Hamlett, a fifth-grader from Belle Meade; and Dylan Gerdes, a fourth-grader from Belle Meade.

The team has played two games so far this season, an 11-2 victory over Woodbridge in a game in which they outshot the team by 45 to 7; and a 10-2 rout of Colonia, in which they outshot the team by a similar margin.

“We’re not only beating teams convincingly, but we are significantly younger,” said Gural.

Parent Una Lee, whose son Spencer attends Memorial School, said getting the team together was a little easier because the hockey community in town is such a small one.

“We know the boys, a couple have played with my son, and a couple boys know boys from other teams,” she said. “So we just know each other from summer clinics. It’s a small community, the hockey community, so when we heard about the league we sent Bill an email.”

With all of the players spending the regular hockey season (during the fall) on travel hockey teams, having a club nearby helps keep them stay sharp during the off season. Gural said there’s no way a player can take nine months off and then expect to show up for the season and have their skills to still be sharp.

But getting better and staying sharp are just one reason these players and their parents want to play for East Brunswick. They also want to show their skills off to their friends and family who may not even know that hockey exists in East Brunswick, and when they’re on the ice, they want everyone to know where they’re from

“The league goes out and supplies uniforms, but we went out and got our own, and we made sure it was green—the jerseys, the socks—to get these kids pride that they’re playing for East Brunswick,” said Gural. “It’s not these generic jersey’s that other kids are wearing, and to me that’s important. We have kids who’ve played for multiple organizations, and from the beginning of this, they’ve realized that, on this day, they don’t play for the Protec Ducks, or the Princeton Tigers, they play for the East Brunswick Bears, and every one of these kids got and I said, ‘you know what, that’s nice to see.’ ”

Parents and players all hope that some day East Brunswick will offer it’s own middle school and high school programs.

“We’ve had a couple of meetings in the past couple of years to try and get a hockey team started at the high school, but we’ve been unsuccessful because of financial reasons,” said Lee. “ She said parents have even offered to privately fund the hockey club, but there are rules that make that difficult.

Lee said hockey offers her son an outlet other than just soccer, baseball and basketball.

“We’re big sports fans, all our kids play sports,” she said. “He had allergies so we found a sport that he could play inside. So we put him in skates and he loved it. So it was either figure skating or ice hockey. We decided on ice hockey. He’s very fast.”

Paul Losik, hockey manager at the Arenas at Woodbridge, thinks the township certainly has enough talent to maintain a quality program from the beginning.

A former East Brunswick resident and EBHS graduate (95), Losik organized the league and knew going in that the township has many good players who have come through other hockey programs. In addition to the middle school team, an older group of high school aged skaters also has a team.

“I grew up in East Brunswick and never had hockey at that level,” he said. “The East Brunswick team is very strong.”

After graduating in 1995, Losik went to Indiana University of Pennsylvania and has been coaching at the youth level for about 12 years.

“We have five full teams, a lot of kids are catching on now that they want to get into the league,” he said. “Most of them played here, we have various travel teams, and we also have an in-house program here that is like a rec league.”

Places like the Arenas at Woodbridge are often the only sites for East Brunswick kids to play hockey. If they’re good enough at that level and want to continue playing, many are stuck with two options—not playing high school hockey, or moving to a school that does offer it.

“If you live in town that doesn’t have hockey team, a lot of kids look at private school to be able to play hockey, which we all know are very expensive,” said Gural. “Or some of these kids may end up going and playing junior hockey somewhere. If a kid doesn’t have the funds to go to a Lawrenceville Prep or the talent to play junior hockey, a lot of those kids just continue to play travel hockey.”

But future sports glory isn’t the only reason these kids and their parents want to have an East Brunswick team. Playing and playing well is a source of pride for many, and something they want to share with their peers.

 “It’s to give them an avenue to play for their town, and that pride to be able to play for your high school, and have people from your high school to come watch a sport you love. I think it’s a great, great outlet for these kids,” said Gural.

For more information on the league, visit the team’s web page.