Woodstock
But on a Sunday morning in late January, like most weekends between October and early March for the Piconi family, she’s awake at 4:30 a.m., half an hour before she needs to be.
Piconi gets nervous about missing her alarm.
What happens after she gets out of bed is driven more by muscle memory than anything. She makes sure her 13-year-old son, Keaton, is awake and ready to go. She then makes some coffee and throws a quick breakfast together before hopping in the family Chevrolet Suburban for the two-hour drive to Plymouth, N.H., for an 8:30 a.m. puck drop at the Plymouth State University Ice Arena.
Keaton, a goaltender, plays for the Woodstock Youth Hockey Association’s Under-14 team, known in hockey parlance as bantam, which is taking on a U-14 team from Lakes Region.
To get to the rink on time, the Piconis must leave their house at 6 a.m.
Such sacrifices are routine for hockey families in the Upper Valley — and across the United States, for that matter.
In fact, the combination of early-morning wake-up calls, long drives and steep expense required to play the sport leaves some parents wondering whether it’s worth it. Basketball, another winter sports alternative, doesn’t require much more than a pair of sneakers and a quick drive to the nearby gym.
The logistical and financial commitments demanded by youth hockey are not just daunting for some families — they’re deal-breakers.
“I played hockey as a kid. I was the only one in the family who did,” said Bob Friend, who’s son Andrew played youth hockey with the Twin Valley Flyers Hockey Association and is now a goaltender for the Lebanon-Stevens cooperative team.
“My brother (Mike) didn’t get his kids involved in it because he knew how long of a commitment it was. It wasn’t so much the financial end of it, but it was the time commitment.
“People are kind of scared of it if you’re not from a hockey family,” Friend added. “Once you’re in it, though, it’s great.”
In fact, dealing with the challenges of the sport makes for a bonding experience among hockey families.
“Hockey families are phenomenal,” said Dan French, who is involved in the Hanover Wild’s girls program committee, works as Hanover’s learn-to-play coordinator and also coaches Hanover’s U-14 girls team. “If families can’t afford to drive, or they have to work, other families will pick them up. That’s part of the culture, to cut down on the costs.”
E.J. Bishop, the executive director at Union Arena whose son Alden played youth hockey, echoed that sentiment: “I’ve gone through it. To be honest, I’d never trade it for anything. The time you get to spend with your child, it’s worth it. You can cry about the costs, but before you know it they grow up and they’re gone. … You just find a way to make it happen.”
Catching the Hockey Bug
Hockey, Piconi admits, is contagious. Four of her five children play hockey at Woodstock for four different teams. Lucas, 16, is a sophomore forward with the Woodstock High boys hockey team. Griffin, 11, plays for WYHA’s U-12 team, known as pee-wee, and Fiona, 8, is starting to play for WYHA’s U-8 team. Their oldest, Kallan, a Union College student, is the only Piconi child who did not catch the hockey bug.
Piconi played field hockey and lacrosse. Louis, her husband, played baseball and basketball. The family moved to the Upper Valley from Pittsburgh in the summer of 2014 to be closer to her parents.
Some of the Piconis’ children had already become involved in the sport, so they were sure to choose a house near a hockey rink. They live seven minutes from Woodstock’s Union Arena.
“That makes our life so much easier,” Eden Piconi said.
The Woodstock Junior Wasps is one of four youth hockey organizations in the Upper Valley — the others are the Hanover Hockey Association, dubbed the Hanover Wild; the Upper Valley Hockey Association, also known as Upper Valley Storm; and the Twin Valley Flyers Hockey Association — that serve about 400 youth athletes in the Upper Valley.
There are 45 youth hockey associations in New Hampshire and Vermont combined that host about 10,000 athletes.
The Piconi kids are three of 109 youth athletes registered to play hockey with the Woodstock Youth Hockey Association; Lucas plays on high school varsity through the Woodstock athletic department. As the U-14 squad’s only goaltender, Keaton is an essential member of the team.
Eden and Keaton Piconi arrive at Plymouth State University Ice Arena around 7:30 a.m.
Many of his teammates are already in the parking lot, unpacking their gear and dragging it sluggishly through the arena’s double doors.
Keaton goes straight to the locker room, his bulky goaltending gear in tow. Eden Piconi greets a group of Woodstock parents at the door and settles in.
A day earlier, the Piconis were settled comfortably in their seats at Union Arena, a rare weekend day in which Lucas, Keaton, Griffin and Fiona all had home games with their respective teams. The first game is at 8:30 a.m. Louis Piconi works for Imagine Learning, a tutoring company that teaches math and literacy, and spends much of his time on the road.
But winter weekends are dedicated to hockey.
While Eden and Keaton are in Plymouth, Louis is at home games or with Griffin and Fiona. Eden does most of the heavy lifting and Lucas, finally old enough to drive, also helps with the drive to and from practices and games.
For the Piconis, and other hockey families, hockey commutes create a dynamic that they’ve come to cherish.
“You get to spend one-on-one time with your children,” Eden Piconi said.
“It’s not a forced conversation. You can just talk about life in general, and in the process get to meet a lot of their peers and observe them in that close space of a car ride. You hear things they’re talking about. It really gives you an insight into your kids.”
An Expensive Proposition
And then there’s the cost.
Outfitting a goalie is much more expensive than equipping a regular skater and presents an added financial burden in a sport already among the most expensive. When factoring in equipment, registration and travel costs, expenses can run high.
Bob Friend runs the hockey shop on the lower level of West Lebanon’s Stateline Sports. The quality and cost of equipment can vary, but outfitting a hockey player in mid-range gear can cost about $600 for a skater and $1,200 for a goaltender, though it is rare for families to purchase every piece of equipment at once.
Friend said most families are not shocked by the prices for mid-level or beginner equipment.
What catches them off guard, he said, are the high-end skates, sticks and pads that become a requirement for higher-level competition, a problem created by marketing campaigns undertaken by equipment manufacturers.
Bauer’s Vapor 1X line, which Friend said is seen by many as the industry’s gold standard, sells skates for $900, shoulder pads for $190 and shin guards for $170. Stateline Sports’ most popular skate is the Bauer X400 and X500, which go for about $200 each.
“If you look at the marketing, you see the latest and greatest stick coming out,” Friend said.
“They just market the top-of-the-line stuff. If you’re not from a hockey family and you don’t know, why would you get your kid involved in a sport that’s going to cost you over $1,000? They don’t market it to the regular Joe.”
Stateline Sports dedicates the entire lower level of the store to skates, sticks, gloves and other hockey-specific gear, and hockey equipment represents a third of its total business.
Registration fees and purchasing new equipment can drive up costs; maintaining equipment contributes, as well. But hockey’s most costly expense — ice time — make it unique.
An hour of ice time at Hartford’s Wendell A. Barwood Arena runs $210, according to Scott Hausler, assistant director of Hartford’s Parks and Recreation Department, who is in charge of selling ice. In Woodstock, where ice time at Union Arena costs $224 an hour, registration prices range from $500 for mites, ages 6 to 8, to $1,075 for bantams, ages 13-14. Woodstock’s bantam team serves as a steppingstone to the Woodstock varsity hockey teams.
At Hanover High, athletes playing on the Marauders’ junior varsity team were told in December they would soon have to pay $1,000 to play, instead of the $150 schoolwide participation fee charged to every athlete in every sport to help offset the $16,000 cost of running the jayvee squad. Marauders athletic director Mike Jackson told the Valley News in January that inconsistent turnout from year to year, and the relatively high cost of the sport, has worked against including junior varsity boys hockey in the athletic department’s $644,000 budget, forcing the school to look for alternate sources of financial support.
At the high school varsity level, ice time is part of the annual athletic budget. But unlike football — which provides helmets and shoulder pads to its athletes — hockey players must fend for themselves when it comes to their own equipment.
Travel costs can also be burdensome, not to mention time-consuming, though they vary by age group, team and association. More-competitive hockey associations will travel farther, though many stay in New England. The Hanover Wild traveled as far as Ottawa’s Richcraft Sensplex in Ontario this winter. Woodstock played a tournament in Albany, N.Y. Upper Valley’s Bantam 1 team, for example, is scheduled to travel more than 1,700 miles traveling to 12 away games this season.
Many associations offer financial assistance to families to help cover costs, a recognition of just how expensive hockey can be.
Matt Maher, president of the Upper Valley Storm Association, said fewer than 5 percent of the 140 athletes registered for youth hockey through his organization take advantage of the scholarship fund. In his experience, he said, more families turn away from hockey not because of the financial burden but because of the perceived threat of concussions, the availability of alternate winter activities and youth hockey’s reputation for out-of-control parents.
“There’s always something in the news about a hockey parent doing something crazy,” Maher said.
Woodstock also has a scholarship fund to help families with costs, and used equipment can be donated to the association when its original owner has outgrown it.
That isn’t the case everywhere, particularly in more urban areas where ice time and spots on a roster are in higher demand.
Such teams aren’t necessarily inclined to be especially welcoming to newcomers
The Piconis saw this firsthand in Pittsburgh, where Lucas, was looked on as an outsider when he first started to play hockey.
“There are programs who would take those younger kids that are working hard, they would hardly get any playing time. Maybe a couple of shifts in a game,” Eden Piconi said. “… You play to win. Here, it’s really based on participation.”
The Payoff
Coffee flows at the Plymouth State arena. Conversation turns to this morning’s opponent, then to who would be willing to volunteer for the penalty boxes, then future games, some of which will require sleepovers and car-pooling.
Eden Piconi works as the Woodstock Youth Hockey Association’s scheduler, a volunteer task that requires a lot of phone calls and coordination to help set up games and tournaments for the Junior Wasps’ seven teams over hockey’s five-month season.
The game begins at 8:30 a.m. Woodstock scores just seconds into the first period on a seemingly harmless dump-in from center ice, catching a sleepy Lakes Region’s goaltender off-guard.
Piconi leans over. “I guess he’s still waking up,” she said.
Youth hockey is usually scheduled for earlier time slots, leaving afternoon time open for adult leagues, open public skating and other ice-specific activities. Early-morning games and practices certainly have an effect on the game, but athletes and their parents say the break-of-dawn activities serve as a rite of passage.
Woodstock wins easily, 9-1; Keaton is rarely tested.
Afterward, Woodstock’s athletes and parents walk across the road to Annie’s Overflow Restaurant for a hearty breakfast. It’s 10:30 a.m., and Eden Piconi hopes to get home before 1 p.m.
To some extent, she acknowledges, parents are at the mercy of their children’s interests. Hockey, and lacrosse in the spring, just happen to be the sport her children have chosen, thus making the Piconis a hockey family.
But she’s quick to point out that hockey has changed their family dynamic. She’s even taken up adult hockey herself, playing with a group of hockey moms on Sunday afternoons.
“I think it starts with our kids,” she said. “Your life sort of morphs. It’s totally part of parenting.”
But hockey, in so many ways, is different.
It requires a group of dedicated people to work successfully and, if done right, can actually work to the benefit of all, despite the sacrifices — of time, of sleep, of travel, of money — that it demands.
“I think because we genuinely really like the families that our kids are playing sports with now, that makes it easier for everybody,” she said.
“We socialize. We’ll have a bonfire. All the kids will go out playing sports, running around being kids, and the adults are inside hanging out with each other. It’s not like our kids are the only ones getting something out of this. It’s the parents that are getting a payoff also.”
Josh Weinreb can be reached at 603-727-3306 or jweinreb@vnews.com.