Meet the Press: Zack Fisch savoring the ‘Sweetest’ gig in the minor leagues

(Photo courtesy of Zach Fisch)

Zack Fisch and professional hockey are not in Kansas City anymore. The last team to represent the first-year Hershey Bears broadcaster’s native locality — the United League’s Outlaws — came and went when he was a mere 14 years old in 2004-05. Their predecessors, the International League’s Blades, started before Fisch was old enough to remember anything, then marred his memory bank by evaporating when he was 10.

Fast-forward a decade-plus, and Fisch is more understanding of those setbacks, not to mention inclined to count his blessings.

“I now know how much minor-league sports are a business,” he told Pucks and Recreation, “and at times, tough business decisions have to be made. It’s an unfortunate nature of this business that teams do come and go, and with that, so do some amazing people in this industry.

“I have seen friends lose jobs because a team they worked for folded or moved. While no one is immune to change, I have been very fortunate to have worked for the teams I have worked for.”

Considering their historical stature and the enviable stability that connotes, Fisch’s two employers through two seasons of calling pro hockey make an understatement of his remark. He spent 2015-16 with the ECHL’s South Carolina Stingrays, who will celebrate their 25th anniversary next year. Playing at the same Double-A level as the bygone UHL, the Stingrays are the longest living brand in their league.

This past season, Fisch was elevated to the AHL’s Bears, who will round out their full decade of operation next year. Playing at the same Triple-A level as the bygone IHL, the Bears are the longest living brand in all of minor-league hockey.

“While the Blades are long gone, it’s quite humbling to think that I am working at essentially the same level in the American Hockey League,” he said. “The level of play is top-notch, and I am lucky enough to work with the most historic franchise in the league.”

Native to Olathe, Kan., a suburb just across the Missouri state border, Fisch grew up an insatiable Heartland hockey enthusiast. As such, the Blades functioned like a fun uncle or family friend from the next county over.

Fisch went to games at Kemper Arena on a regular basis and played youth hockey in the Junior Blades program. On occasion, he combined those activities by joining his team for intermission mini-games. In one instance, he was even selected as the youth representative to lead the big Blades onto the ice for the main event.

Over their final four years of operation, the Blades and their league took on a terminal outlook. After peaking at 19 member clubs in 1996-97, the IHL lost teams exponentially over the next four seasons. It was down to 11 by 2000-01, and still more franchises were lingering in vain.

As a result, in a move reminiscent of the 1979 NHL-WHA merger, the late spring of 2001 saw the IHL’s few healthy franchises transfer to the AHL. The Blades could have been among them, theoretically, based on decent attendance figures. The trouble was they were owned by the same group, Richard DeVos and his family, as the league rival Grand Rapids Griffins and Orlando Solar Bears.

Because the AHL had a one-team policy for owners, the Michigan-based DeVoses needed to make a choice. The Griffins won out, and back in Olathe, 10-year-old Fisch was forced and “devastated” to watch the local news bulletins of the Blades’ demise.

Even today, he is preserving his first favorite team’s memory by keeping a jersey in the closet at his new home. It is a gesture worth more than nostalgia because in dying, the franchise later bequeathed a boost to his career, and a few perks still to come.

“Funny enough, the Blades helped me get my job in Hershey,” Fisch said. “Current VP of hockey operations Bryan Helmer played with the Blades during their final season, and his son Cade was actually born in Kansas City. I dropped a Blades reference during my interview with Hershey, and that was enough to get Bryan’s ears to perk up.”

In his field’s fraternity, the Bears broadcaster is not alone among those who used to frequent Kemper Arena. His childhood idol, Bob Kaser, called the Blades’ first 10 seasons before moving to the Griffins in 2000. He is still with the Grand Rapids franchise, and has won a combined three broadcaster-of-the-year awards from the two leagues.

Being in separate conferences, the Bears and Griffins rarely cross paths, last doing so in 2005-06. However, Fisch has learned that Grand Rapids will be on Hershey’s docket for 2017-18, which will equal his first chance to meet Kaser.

“I am excited to get a chance to share stories about his time in Kansas City and thank him for being an influence in how I call a game all these years later,” he said. 

Giant expectations in small places

In his effort to emulate Kaser and Hall of Fame Kansas City Royals announcer Denny Matthews, Fisch covered the short-lived Outlaws for a small-town paper while still a teen. Around the same time, he started venturing an hour west to his state capital to cover the Topeka Tarantulas of the Central League. It was there that he first saw a player-assistant coach named Troy Mann, who by 2009-10 had moved up to the AHL and is now in his third year as the Bears bench boss.

“That’s how small the hockey world is,” Fisch said.

With the exception of his first job out of college with the junior-level USHL’s Dubuque Fighting Saints in Iowa, Fisch has not experienced many small subsectors of the hockey world until now. His native city of Olathe has a population easily above fix figures. The same goes for North Charleston, S.C. where the locals enjoy Stingrays games at a 14,000-seat Coliseum. Neighboring Charleston checks in at over 130,000 residents.

The community at his alma mater, St. Cloud State University, boasts more than a combined 17,000 undergraduates, postgraduates, faculty and staff. Only one-third of that conglomeration can get into the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center on a given game night.

Hershey is a far numerical cry from each of those, although Fisch says Dubuque, where he met his wife, Krista, during his three-year run, had a similar feel. As a lifelong Iowan, Krista would find Hershey to her liking for that reason.

“Dubuque isn’t a huge city, and to us, Hershey is comparable,” Zack Fisch said. “Both towns are quaint, have some picturesque sights, and are rabid for hockey. The people here have made it a very easy adjustment. I met so many people who welcomed me to the area with open arms and gave me all sorts of tips and suggestions about the town and region.”

That region revolves around the Pennsylvania capital of Harrisburg, of which Hershey is basically a suburb. Harrisburg is a relatively small city in its own right with a population south of 50,000.

According to City Data, Hershey’s population spiked by 11.6 percent during the first decade of this century, but is still at a meager 14,257. With its 10,500 seating capacity, the Giant Center — which replaced the historic Hersheypark Arena as the Bears’ new home in 2002 — can accommodate more than two-thirds of the town’s residents.

On many game nights, it appears to be doing just that. In between, the team is a reliable topic for small talk among strangers in a town so small that the locals are barely strangers. In a community where season tickets have been passed down for two generations or more, tales from as far back as the 1950s are told first-, second- and third-hand.

“I often run into fans at the supermarket or while shopping,” Fisch said. “Everyone is so cordial and loves to talk hockey.”

The habitual hockey talk from Hershey’s residents has only amplified the sense of promotion and confirmed at least one common thread with the other franchises Fisch has worked for. In his first year at Dubuque, the Fighting Saints finished first in the USHL, then followed up by winning the 2013 Clark Cup, their second in three years. Their head coach, Jim Montgomery, subsequently moved to the University of Denver.

The Saints reached the semifinals in each of Fisch’s next two years in their booth. He left at the same time as second-year coach Matt Shaw, who joined Brad Berry’s staff at the University of North Dakota.

When he got to South Carolina, the Stingrays were coming off their fourth Kelly Cup Final in franchise history, and had fallen one win shy of their fourth championship. They went to the conference final in his presence, then reached the title round again this year.

“I love getting to work for a team that expects to be successful both on and off the ice,” Fisch said. “As a broadcaster and employee, it holds me to a high standard and makes me proud to put my passion toward a team that has already written so many chapters in the history books.

“From Dubuque to South Carolina to Hershey, I’ve landed in three organizations that are immersed in the community, are regular Cup contenders and are looked at as the gold standard in their respective leagues. If that doesn’t get you excited to come to work every day, I don’t know what will.”

Frantic and fanatical first impressions

With the Stingrays and Bears acting as Washington’s two development clubs, Fisch quickly formed a friendship with Capitals radio voice John Walton, who had called Hershey games for nine years before making his leap to The Show. Through that connection, much like the players he would soon cover, Fisch got a taste of preseason NHL action on Oct. 5 of last year.

Fittingly enough, the Caps were engaging the Blues at the Sprint Center in Kansas City. The St. Louis franchise’s effort to strengthen statewide support translated to a respectable mass of 11,781 at the 17,544-seat venue.

“That moment was a pinch-me moment,” Fisch said, “and something that I’ll never forget.”

The afterglow of the midweek homecoming soon gave way to a literal and figurative tempest. Fisch returned to South Carolina for the weekend when Hurricane Matthew slugged the state. And having been promoted to the AHL in late September, he was left with little time as it was to complete his relocation ahead of the Oct. 14 season opener in Rochester, N.Y.

Walton, his predecessor, helped him in that process, and he ultimately accomplished all of the necessary preparation within his control. Lo and behold, by game night, Blue Cross Arena’s Ethernet feeder malfunctioned in the visitors’ booth. In turn, Fisch spent his debut describing a game between the Bears (the league’s oldest and most storied brand) and the Rochester Americans (the league’s second-oldest franchise at 61 years and counting) over his cell phone.

“We got on the air, but it made for a heck of a story,” he said.

The Bears shuffled to Binghamton the next night, then held their home opener Oct. 22. “From the day I set foot in the city and at the Giant Center, you could tell that Hershey was its own piece of Hockey Heaven,” Fisch said.

He had broken into the AHL through those two away games. He had a full week thereafter to focus on the home opener. He had the added tune-up from the preseason gig in his hometown. And he had heard plenty from his predecessor and mentor, Walton.

But then he settled in and actually watched 8,045 announced attendees file in put the Hershey hockey culture on full display. Referring to Walton, Fisch remarked, “I had high expectations based on his thoughts, and many others, and that night just blew them all out of the water.”

If he had any plans, even of the most deep-down nature, to take an impartial approach, those went the way of the expectations. The crowd punctuated the Star-Spangled Banner with “Go Bears!” They spelled out the team nickname New York Jets style in the wake of the first goal, bringing “an ear-to-ear grin” to Fisch’s face. And coming back from a commercial break, which only let the atmosphere sink in all the more, he was temporarily speechless.

“The Giant Center is a building like no other,” he said. “But it’s the Bears fans, many who have been coming to games their whole lives, who make this experience here so invigorating.”

Embracing with a Bear hug

Indeed, there is no place like Hershey. Not if you love chocolate, and not if you love minor-league hockey.

Fisch suspected as much on the latter while he was still in the Heartland, though he admits there is no substitute for in-person confirmation.

“I never got far enough east to see a Hershey Bears game in person, but I was very aware of the significance of the team,” he said. “I always held them, and the Fort Wayne Komets, to such a high standard as teams that had such a special history. As I started to work in hockey as I got older, I heard more and more just how special of a place Hershey was.”

To date, the Bears have won a record 11 Calder Cup championships. They have been to 23 finals, most recently last year. Despite multiple affiliation changes and the inevitable revolving door on both sides of the building, the Bears have been a relatively consistent contender.

Since 1997, they have only once gone more than five years without at least one trip to the AHL conference finals. During that stretch, they have made five Calder Cup Final appearances and won four titles. Walton called three of those championships, while his predecessor, future Tampa Bay Lightning voice Dave Mishkin, chronicled the 1997 run.

The Bears’ dominance at the gate is even more patent. They have topped the AHL’s attendance chart for 11 years running.

“Every team in hockey claims they have the best fans in the league,” Fisch said. “However, I can say with confidence that Hershey has the best fans in the AHL, hands down.”

“It’s a fan base, and most of all a community, that has love and passion for their team like no other place I’ve been. No matter how the team is playing, no matter the weather, these folks will be there night in and night out cheering on their Bears.”

Technically an unincorporated community self-titled after chocolatier Milton S. Hershey, the town makes the most out of ostensibly the least. Nearly every major establishment in its epicenter shares the name of the famed candy company. (The Bears are not the least of those examples, their name being a natural pun on the company’s signature product.)

The aptly dubbed Giant Center is one of the few spots named after a separate entity, a chain of Pennsylvania grocery stores. But given the history of its tenant, it fits in more than it stands out.

The arena’s latest Stadium Journey review assesses, “this is one arena where you can make an entire vacation out of your trip for a hockey game. You could fill an entire week by spending a day or two at the amusement park, a day at the chocolate world, a day at the spa (complete with cocoa baths) and an evening at a Bears hockey game.”

With its theme park and boardwalk among the attractions in the shopping district, Hersheypark is like a real-life Wonder Wharf from Bob’s Burgers, but with more chocolate, less off-putting people and Bears hockey in lieu of Wonderdogs baseball. Perfect for a puck-centric sportscaster and a small-town product like Zack Fisch and Krista, respectively.

“Hershey is ‘The Sweetest Place on Earth’ and it really is a fantastic place to call home,” said Fisch. “What Milton Hershey built here, all based around chocolate, is pretty impressive, and there are so many people committed to carrying on his legacy and making Hershey a destination. The people in Hershey have been so kind and welcoming, and that’s something that really stands out to me. The kindness and generosity of the people in the area is second to none.”

More than enough that he is willing to, for the first time in a long time, settle down and wait for his next elevation up the broadcasting ladder.

“Obviously, every player or broadcaster has the goal of getting to the NHL, and I'm no exception,” he said. “However, I'm not in any hurry for that to happen because of just how fantastic Hershey is. This is a place where I am looking forward to growing personally and professionally, and really making myself the person and broadcaster I want to be. I’m honored to be part of the Hershey community and a member of the Bears. Hershey is a special place.”

Halli Krzyzaniak preserving a program’s all-round picture

(Photo courtesy of UND Media Relations)

Halli Krzyzaniak only needed to stand for her first Canadian national team portrait in 2014 to tell an as-yet-unfamiliar world what she was — and still is — all about. Her choice to keep on her eyewear for that particular shoot set her apart from her teammates, fashion-wise. Three years later, it retroactively symbolizes her status in the program, namely as a graduated, yet unfinished student.

Two months into her sophomore year at the University of North Dakota, and barely eight months after her country corralled its fourth straight Olympic gold medal, Krzyzaniak cracked Canada’s roster at the 2014 Four Nations Cup. This meant missing a weekend of intercollegiate action, plus a week of classes in Grand Forks.

But she did not ditch her best intellectual persona in the process. Trade the red and black for blue and red, and the maple leaf for an “S”, and one would think Kara Danvers neglected to complete her transformation out of haste. 

For the customary stickblade-in-the-camera and stick-behind-the-shoulders poses, Krzyzaniak proudly sported Hockey Canada’s 100th anniversary patch on her No. 25 jersey. Above all of the visible gear, she sported a pair of rectangular glasses with frames almost as bold and black as the shoulder caps on her jersey. 

The hockey equipment signaled that Krzyzaniak has the athletic potential of Meghan Mikkelson. The spectacles signified that she, both superficially and within, has the head of Alex Dunphy.

Six semesters and eight IIHF events later, she does not quite have the superstar ceiling of Hayley Wickenheiser. But she does bear the same basic, all-round aspirations as the five-time Olympic puckster who is now embarking on medical school after hanging up her skates earlier this year.

Krzyzaniak is chasing her first Olympic roster spot on the heels of obtaining the WCHA’s postgraduate scholarship. The scholarship entails a $7,500 grant toward continuing education, which Krzyzaniak plans to pursue en route to a career in orthopedics.

For her alma mater, which saw its final shift of NCAA women’s hockey action for the foreseeable future March 4, the scholarship makes for one last bragging-rights bow.

“Receiving this scholarship from the WCHA definitely helps my pride in coming from the WCHA and playing in such a great league against some of the best players in the world,” she said in a phone interview with Pucks and Recreation.

Krzyzaniak is far from the last bastion of the North Dakota women’s hockey program, which the university administration euthanized in late March. All players with remaining collegiate eligibility are free to disperse to other programs. At least nine have already transferred to another NCAA Division I school, while two others are going to the Canadian Interuniversity system.

Among the alumnae, twin sisters Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux are gunning for their third go-round with the U.S. Olympic team. Michelle Karvinen and Susanna Tapani could both represent Team Finland next February, as could undergraduates Anna Kilponen, Emma Nuutinen and Vilma Tanskanen. Amy Menke is an NWHL prospect for the New York Riveters.

But barring an eventual replenishment, Krzyzaniak will be a part of the Fighting Hawks’ last graduating class. She will be a part of their last cluster of captains, having sported an “A” over her heart her junior and senior season.

And whenever she resumes her studies, she will be the last student-athlete in the program’s run to attend school with financial aid that she earned as a direct result of contributing to UND.

 “Especially with everything that did happen with the North Dakota program,” she said, “it’s really nice to know that I can still be a continuing part of the WCHA even after my graduation and coming out of our hockey program.”

Krzyzaniak came into the UND women’s hockey program when it was coming off its first two NCAA tournament appearances in 2012 and 2013. (Both runs ended in quarterfinal losses to league rival and national dynasty Minnesota.) She came in with three years of experience with the Canadian U-18 national team, plus an ornate background with Team Manitoba already to her credit.

Krzyzaniak entered the rigorous UND pre-health studies program with a desire to emulate her mother, Kelly, a family physician in their rural Manitoba hometown of Neepawa. The same way a conventional Canadian catches a craze through the tales of their ice-going idols, she acquired her additional ambitions through her mother’s stories of medical school and getting to know a community through an essential service.

“I guess I kind of grew up around her and just seeing what she did…the day-to-day happenings and knowing what she does and having so much pride in her occupation is mostly what’s drawn me towards that,” she said.

Though the Fighting Hawks never returned to the national bracket with Kryzaniak’s input, they finished .500 or better overall in each of her four seasons. As a sophomore and junior, her individual impact translated to a spot on the all-WCHA third team. In each of those two years, the conference also recognized her as a scholar-athlete and an all-academic honoree.

In 2016-17, Krzyzaniak was one of only four Division I women’s hockey players to make one of CoSIDA’s academic all-district scrolls. She was her sports only representative in District Six, which covers all of the women’s WCHA’s territory except Ohio State.

Theoretically, that made it easier for the UND athletic program’s veteran faculty representative, Dr. Sue Jeno, to nominate the university’s candidate for the league’s postgraduate scholarship, which she has done in 11 years on the job.

Four other hockey players (two women’s, two men’s) had previously won continuing financial assistance with Jeno’s good word. With Krzyzaniak’s selection, she gave Jeno and her team a third, plus a repeat following goaltender Shelby Amsley-Benzie’s honor in 2016.

And now, along with 2012 OSU alumna Natalie Spooner, she joins 10 other WCHA ambassadors — all of whom represent UND’s perennial on-ice superiors from Minnesota, Minnesota-Duluth and Wisconsin — on Canada’s centralized roster. She does so as the only one with a selective league-issued academic scholarship waiting patiently on the backburner.

Head on a swivel

While working out with 27 other Olympic candidates in Fredericton, N.B., Krzyzaniak admitted her education will continue at a school to be named later. At present, she is tempted to return close to home by enrolling at the University of Manitoba. But the interim will be long enough for other enticements to emerge, and if there was ever a time that called for a gap year, the 2017-18 hockey season is it.

At the time of her debut with the national program’s big club, Krzyzaniak was one of 10 newbies joining the holdovers from the 2014 Sochi Games. In the wake of three straight silver-medal runs at the IIHF World Championship, her odds and desires for Pyeongchang have only emboldened.

But there are five cuts to come. At least two, maybe three of those will be among the nine centralized defenders Krzyzaniak stands with, including the Vancouver and Sochi veteran Mikkelson. 

As one of five blueliners without prior Olympic experience, she can ill afford an irrecoverable misstep in her protracted tryout. She cannot lose focus. With that said, if her retelling of the WCHA scholarship derby is any indication, she will have little trouble muzzling the scholastic hounds as necessary.

“I didn’t really think too much about it,” she said. “I was away at the World Championships at the time of the nomination, so for me it was kind of just an afterthought.”

Still, the same basic instinct that drew the syrup on her undergraduate sundae — multifold major in honors, biology and pre-health, 3.92 great-point average and all — can help her toward the big scoop she craves in her athletic dish.

Following a seven-week summer break, the Canadian women will reconvene in Calgary on Aug. 1, kicking off a six-month grind before the chosen 23 cross the Pacific. The broad timeline of the singular project resembles — if only vaguely — the senior thesis Krzyzaniak compiled over the last school year.

Per the program’s website, UND’s pre-health majors are expected to uphold following five pillars: “Complete any prerequisite coursework for the professional school or program of their choice as advised.” “Maintain a competitive cumulative GPA (3.0 minimum).” “Take the standardized entrance exam for their field of choice.” “Visit with the Health Sciences Advisor regularly.” “Visit with their major advisor regularly.”

One could liken all of those to, say, building and sustaining one’s Olympic candidacy through regular and visible involvement in the short-order Four Nations Cup and World Championship.

But after letting out an audible, contemplative, “Hmm,” Krzyzaniak singled out the colossal culmination as her defining stage in the pre-health program. Marathons of solitary research and one-on-one work with a professor would yield a page count in the triple digits on her thesis.

“Just having that self-discipline and time management and knowing that the due date wasn’t very close, but I still had to get this very large body of work done,” she said. “It really helped me to be disciplined enough to force myself work on it for a couple of hours every day make sure that I put aside enough time with my other coursework in order to finish the whole project.”

While her upcoming endeavor will not have the company of other commitments, but plenty of human company, it will consume Krzyzniak’s calendar in a comparable manner. In turn, she will again need to manufacture her own urgency in the opening month to prevent it from mounting on its own in the homestretch.

To put that another way, the willpower that fed the inner Alex Dunphy in the 2016-17 academic almanac must now go back to the Halli Krzyzaniak who made an impression at the Pursuit of Excellence Hockey Academy in Kamloops, B.C.

Prior to Krzyzaniak’s first Four Nations Cup, former POE coach Scott Spencer told Christine Ulmer of Hockey Canada’s website, “Halli’s work ethic is second to none. I’ve never seen someone as driven, determined and committed.”

But just as she balanced the Fighting Hawks and Team Canada with her course load, Krzyzaniak could still fetch a few breathers amidst the Olympic tryout. While she is in Alberta, she may take the opportunity to explore the University of Calgary, whose medical doctoral program has ranked among Canada’s top 10 by Maclean’s, the country’s premier college ranker.

As a 2016 draft choice of the NWHL’s Boston Pride, Krzyzaniak may also have long-term options below the 49th parallel. The Pride’s area code boasts three of U.S. News and World Report’s top 50 medical schools in Harvard (ranked No. 1), Boston University and Tufts.

“My main focus in hockey right now is training and competing to hopefully play in the Olympic Games,” Krzyzaniak insisted, before allowing, “That’s definitely something that I would look into, knowing that there are some really great medical schools out there. So if that was something that I would be able to work, so that I was able to play hockey and go to medical school at the same time, that’s something I would definitely look into.”

Plenty to ‘lean on’

Minus her mother, Krzyzaniak is not one to single out influences by name. The habitual team orientation that boosted her leadership credentials in the UND locker room also served to cut down the tales from the UND classrooms that ultimately yielded her scholarship.

“Really, all of the professors at UND were super great and super helpful,” she said. “Knowing the schedule that I had as a student-athlete, and then leaving fairly often for events with my national team, they were very supportive in helping me achieve the grades that I wanted to while missing so much time, and to be able to graduate within four years…I wouldn’t have been able to do it if they weren’t so helpful.”

The calls to give back some of that moral support have rang, if not early and often, then suddenly and harshly. On Nov. 17, 2014 — three weeks after Krzyzaniak traded her specs for her shield to skate in her first Four Nations Cup — North Dakota classmate and teammate Lisa Marvin sustained a multitude of gruesome injuries in a near-fatal auto wreck. 

As Pat Borzi of the New York Times articulated much later, “It would be three days before Marvin’s teammates washed the gasoline and blood out of her hair.” For months thereafter, Marvin lacked physical autonomy as she healed from a host of bone, ligament and nerve wounds.

But after missing the balance of her and Krzyzaniak’s sophomore season, then all of 2015-16, she returned to game shape and saw action in 24 contests this past year.

“With Lisa’s accident, it put a lot of things into perspective,” said Krzyzaniak, who in a future vocation may one day have a role to play in another athlete’s long journey back to game shape. “Most of us had never dealt with something of that magnitude before.

“So to see something like that happen firsthand and to be alongside Lisa for all of her stay in the hospital and then through her very long rehab process, it made us all be able to better see the big picture of life and to know that she was just so lucky to be alive after that.

“But, really, the experiences we were able to have as student-athletes and as teenagers and young adults, that’s just something that you can’t take for granted."

As though any of the Fighting Hawks needed to learn that lesson twice, they were literally taking the ice at Ralph Engelstad Arena for a postseason practice March 29 when the word leaked that their work would be for naught. Menke, the last team captain, subsequently wrote in The Players’ Tribune that she heard the news through classmate Gracen Hirschy, who had learned it via social media.

“It was very abrupt, there was no warning, there was really no indication that something like that was even a possibility,” said Krzyzaniak. “We were a very tight knit group, though, so we had one another to lean on.”

Eight days before posing with Hirschy, Marvin and Menke at their commencement ceremony — her wardrobe uniquely punctuated with an honors’ gold medal — Krzyzaniak had her own social-media missive on the matter. The university’s official Twitter account had quoted President Mark Kennedy as follows: “Our alumni love UND. We are looking to keep it that way.”

Krzyzaniak’s reply: “Really?? Are you sure??”

When she elaborated to Pucks and Rec, she first spoke like the House or Senate leader of an opposition party. Then she switched to a supporting tone for her former teammates who, while she aims to represent UND through a higher than higher education and participation in the five-ring festival, will round out their Division I eligibility on other campuses.

“The president of the university made it very clear that reinstating wasn’t going to happen without an absurdly large amount of money, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to us,” she said.

“But it was more just leaning on one another and knowing that there are going to be some tough days, and that no matter where the girls end up, they always have our support to lean back on.”

Not that Krzyzaniak is dipping too broad a brush into the grudge canister. After all, the athletic department and everything it provided in her time put her in a position to become UND’s first representative on the Canadian women’s Olympic team.

However strong that springboard proves in the sporting world, she will have her league-sanctioned cushion to lean back on. Dr. Jeno and company put her on the path to the last academic scholarship anybody will derive directly from playing North Dakota women’s hockey.

“They were nice enough to nominate me for this award,” she said. “To actually be awarded the scholarship was kind of a surprise for me."

Nothing like a pleasant surprise to brighten the picture so soon after a darkening shock.

Life After Hockey: Shawn Wheeler ‘not so silent’ as an active, adopted Charlottean

As a player, Shawn Wheeler led Charlotte to its finest hockey hour of the last 40 years. As a bench boss, he broke the ECHL’s coaching color barrier. And long after his ice evaporated, he has built on new means of continuing a mutually pleasing relationship with the community.

Shawn Wheeler cites the so-called “Bangin Shrimp” as his go-to crowd-pleaser.

If you met him in his first profession, then lost all first-, second- and third-hand contact due to a Y2K bug that — darn your luck — bit you and only you, the nickname might evoke an intrepid undersized checking-liner. Someone who embodies Don Cherry’s favorite saying about canine body mass versus dimension of aggression to the point where Wheeler cannot help playing favorites.

In reality, the former ECHL winger and one-time head coach has transitioned to a career in sales, and the Bangin Shrimp refers to a decadent decapod dish. As such, it is in no danger of arousing the rest of the roster’s jealousy.

And so, when pressed as to the signature menu item at the Firewater Restaurant and Bar in Charlotte, Wheeler distinguished it. “Of course, I would say, all our items are GREAT!” he wrote in an email to Pucks and Recreation. Upon mentioning the Bangin Shrimp, he added, “If you’re ever in town, it’s a must-try.”

A former fan favorite — a title confirmed, if not reinforced, by animosity from opposing cities — in his own right with the Charlotte Checkers, Wheeler has stuck around town for 17 years and counting since his ties with the organization ended. Little beyond the work setting and everything that comes with it has changed in his professional life over that span.

He once wore the double-billed lid as a player-assistant coach before becoming the team’s bench boss in 1998. Through that role, he became the first African-American head coach in the league’s history.

At his peak as a player, Wheeler had a way of loosening the label “assistant” when he served as the legendary John Marks’ skating sidekick. Through his achievements on the ice, he was less of an assistant and more of a pilot for a franchise that raked in the Riley Cup in 1996. That was the city’s first hockey crown in 20 years, following a previous Checkers team’s 1976 triumph in the Southern League. No titles have come since.

He still wears multiple hats, working full-time in pharmaceutical sales while collaborating with Firewater co-owners Ahmad and Wasef Mohammad.

Technically speaking, in his words, he is the Mohammad brothers’ “silent partner, but I’m not so silent.”

To that point, the way he was reached last week, Wheeler still exudes a hustle, energy and counting-every-second mentality he once left on the ice in a prior millennium. He accepted and filled out a questionnaire over his smartphone when he had a moment free. The ensuing transcript brandished speed, fervor and natural force through its abundant exclamation points and amused acronyms.

Overtime ombudsmen

Janssen Pharmaceutical’s customers come first for Wheeler, as they have since 2001. He characterizes his moonlight and weekend duties at Firewater as “an investment role.”

But true to his word about “silent” being the not-so-operative word in “silent partner,” he will personally illustrate his investment upon request. Three years ago, when Lake Norman Currents profiled Firewater, Wheeler philosophized, “Service to me is a home feeling. It’s a welcome feeling. It shouldn’t be challenging to sit somewhere and ask for a meal and feel like somebody’s granting you a favor. It should feel like it’s 100 percent their pleasure that you’re there.

In that same interview, he concluded, “If you can give people a neighborhood feel and the customer service that everybody deserves, that’s going to be the key.”

He once used the same sort of adamancy about leaving nothing unturned to make a dose of ECHL history in the winter of 1995-96. Marks singled out a 3-2 triumph over the Roanoke Express from that year when, in 2008, nhl.com’s Brian Compton acknowledged his distinction as the league’s all-time winningest coach.

On that night, Wheeler singlehandedly filled a 2-0 pothole within the final three minutes of regulation. “I recall scoring to tie the game on a backhand shot,” he told Pucks and Rec. “I love saying (that was) my signature shot.”

The ensuing shootout went to a previously unsurpassed 21st round after Wheeler, among many others, failed the bust the knot when the opportunity presented itself. He temporarily rued his failure to beat goaltender Matt DelGuidice — a rare right-handed catcher and a brief teammate the year prior — and his inferred subsequent benching as the extra innings piled up.

But the more the others missed, the closer his second chance to finish what he started came, which it did in that 21st inning.

“Marksy didn’t even look at me, he just yelled, ‘Wheels your up.’ I recall going in and looking at the same low corner as it was wide open, but I think (DelGuidice) was baiting me. So instead of shooting, I held a bit longer and I faked the shot. He dropped, and I stuffed it under the crossbar.”

Comeback complete. History made.

“You would think, after reading this, that I think about moments like this often,” Wheeler said. “And each time I do, it gets better and better.”

Friends close, enemies closer

Frank Anzalone, who coached Roanoke from 1993 to 1998, was no stranger to torment at Wheeler’s hands by the time the latter found his eventual adulthood home. The trend started with their first full overlapping ECHL season when both men found themselves in Virginia.

Wheeler was 27 years of age, and coming off his first (and ultimately only) season spent predominantly at the Triple-A level with IHL Peoria. Now back in the premier Double-A circuit with the Hampton Roads Admirals, he had garnered his first gig as a player-assistant coach under John Brophy. He justified the appointment by translating his exemplary leadership to a career-high 74 points in only 47 games played.

And in a Dec. 17, 1993 home date with the Express, he was singled out for sparking a decisive offensive eruption. On that night, Hampton Roads utilized its timeout at the halfway mark of regulation with a 1-1 deadlock at hand. Minutes after the Admirals absorbed an impassioned earful from Brophy, Wheeler bustled to the Roanoke cage and took multiple stabs before burying a floodgate-opening goal.

Following the eventual 7-4 Hampton Roads victory and a three-point effort by Wheeler, Anzalone enviously told Mike Holtzclaw of Virginia’s Daily Press, “That damn Shawn Wheeler. If we had that kind of effort, we’d be in the middle of the pack instead of last place.”

That season also witnessed one of Wheeler’s more memorable helpings of rough stuff in a home date with his old friends from Greensboro. A four-minute, 28-second YouTube upload immortalizes a series of scraps sparked two seconds after the opening faceoff.

When the majority of the melee slithered to the right corner of the Greensboro Monarchs zone, Wheeler was among those who lost his jersey. Hardly a shock considering he led the Monarchs with 301 penalty minutes in 1991-92.

Likewise, in his first year with the Checkers, he dressed for all 68 games and logged 226 minutes in the sin bin. He was second among the team’s PIM leaders with 210 in 1995-96.

By that time, another entity new to the league in 1993-94, the North Charleston-based South Carolina Stingrays, had come to match Roanoke’s distaste for Wheeler’s impact. In most years, South Carolina and Roanoke were in the same division as the three teams that Wheeler variously represented.

In their run to the 1996 Riley Cup, the Checkers dumped the Express to set a second-round date with the Stingrays. Wheeler’s personal highlight of the series had him polishing a play that took advantage of a South Carolina defensive blunder.

“We were losing, and I was forechecking their D-man, who I think was Scott Boston,” he recalled. “I went to chase him to the right of the net, and he skated behind and as he came around the opposite side, he fired the puck up the middle as they flew the zone. But Phil Berger was posted in the middle and batted the puck down fired a pass to me at the right side of net for a wide-open goal.

“Not sure why Boston fired it up the middle, when he could have skated it out of the zone. But it was a series-changer for which, it typical Berger fashion, he said if I would have missed he would have two-handed me."

Even the North Charleston media stoked the feuding flames, using Wheeler as the log in one memorable instance.

On the eve of a game at the North Charleston Coliseum, Wheeler kicked back in his room and tuned in to a local newscast. Going in, his plan was to simply soak in the sports bulletins for pleasure before drifting to rest for the action ahead.

But in an age before the Internet made the listicle a media staple, he perked up as the station sports director channeled an inner David Letterman with “Ten Reasons to HATE Shawn Wheeler.”

The following night, the Coliseum congregants greeted him with a classic surname singsong usually reserved for visiting goaltenders. Whee-ler, Whee-ler, Whee-ler, then the punctuation, “You suck!”

The recipient got a kick out of the acapella acrimony. “Man, it was loud, and they really hated me,” he marveled.

‘It was just time to call somewhere home’

Throughout Wheeler’s involvement, the now-nationwide ECHL was a predominantly Southern circuit, with a sprinkling of additional teams in Pennsylvania, Ohio and eventually Peoria, Ill.

As he came out of the Division III program at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, the then-fledgling middle-tier minor league was the best realistic recourse to launch a professional playing career.

Adjustments would be inevitable. Wheeler was born on the outskirts of the Bronx in Mount Vernon, N.Y. For two-plus centuries, Mount Vernon has logged a diverse slew of notable gifts to sports (e.g. Ralph Branca and Floyd Patterson), entertainment (Denzel Washington and Dick Clark) and literature (E.B. White). It was also the shooting location for Mean Joe Greene’s famous Coca-Cola ad when Wheeler was 13.

At age 18, Wheeler moved north and far west to Alberta to bolster his hockey career at the Junior A level. Two seasons there with the Hobbema Hawks yielded the four-year stay at Stevens Point, where he is still holds the single-season penalty-minute record.

Graduating in 1990, he met a new experience with a new decade, breaking into the pucks-for-pay realm while crossing the Mason-Dixon Line. He would be tasked with helping to sell the game to still-fairly unfamiliar audiences while regularly experiencing the continent’s historic epicenter of racial strife. While subjective offsides calls from the stands were not entirely new to him, crossing this line was all but sure to yield its share.

His first stop: North Carolina, where the Monarchs played at the Greensboro Coliseum, located three miles west of where the Greensboro Four staged their groundbreaking sit-in four months after the arena had opened in October 1959.

“Yes, things were extremely different,” he admits. “The South is a great place with a lot of history, but the racial aspect was at a different level, but please don’t think it wasn’t experienced in Canada or even Wisconsin. I’ll just leave it at that.”

With everything he brought to the rink, be it within or without his control, Wheeler was practically the P.K. Subban of his time and level. There was consistent rancor from Roanoke and South Carolina, but general endearment in the cities where he saturated each side of the scoresheet.

The last of those would instill the “neighborhood feel” he would one day strive to reciprocate via Firewater. And when Marks moved from Charlotte to the expansion Greenville Grrrowl in 1998, years of apprenticeship yielded a bigger nugget of ECHL history. Four years after the Atlanta Knights made John Paris, Jr., the IHL’s first head coach of African descent, another league achieved the same milestone in another Southern state’s largest city.

But as a testament to his long-established assimilation to the Checkers, Wheeler’s promotion had more of a formality vibe to it at the time.

“I don’t recall it being that big of a story compared to when I first signed as their player-coach,” he reflected. “Perhaps it was because I was already entrenched in the program and people were generally just happy I landed the job.

“I would say, it’s more talked about now, as I get requests to speak with youth groups or when someone recognizes my voice, and then it comes up.”

Wheeler was not merely entrenched in the Checkers. He was entrenched in Charlotte. But the test of that relationship soon landed before him in the form of severance paperwork.

After five winning campaigns from their inception onward under Marks, the 1998-99 Checkers were the first installment to finish below .500, albeit by only one game. The next season, on Jan. 11, 2000, a 7-3 home win over the Greensboro Generals — the Monarchs’ distant successor after the city’s AHL and NHL flings — improved the Checkers to a mediocre 14-18-3.

That would be Wheeler’s last hurrah in competitive hockey. The team sought a front-office shakeup for the second half of the schedule.

“It was a challenging two years behind the bench, but to make excuses is to fault others,” Wheeler said. “As a coach, you’re hired to be fired.”

Merely 33 at the time of his dismissal, Wheeler could have left Charlotte to stay in the game, either as a player, a coach or combination. But when no satisfactory opportunities stuck, he left the game in order to stay in Charlotte.

“It was just time to call somewhere home,” he said.

He would stay prominently on the local sports scene for another decade. Within three months of vacating his bench, he was hosting a weekday midday talk show, The Player’s Club, on WFNZ radio. By mid-February of 2009, when a Charlotte Observer blog ranked the city’s five best sports-talk specialists, one anonymous commenter cited Wheeler among the list’s glaring omissions.

That could help to explain the voice recognition and the “not so silent” inclinations.

Postgame ventures satisfy

In his first full year out of hockey and the first official year of the 21st century, Wheeler took his longstanding full-time job in pharmaceutical sales. But another key component of his past kept cropping up in Ahmad Mohammad, who first met Wheeler while working at Bentley’s restaurant, where Wheeler was a common patron in his playing days.

“We used to conduct speaker programs at Bentley’s and we began a friendship with him and his brother Wasef,” Wheeler explained. “They ventured on and I would run into them often. We then crossed paths again, while he was with Red Rocks and was in the process of opening a restaurant and bar close to my home, and we started talking about possibly going into business together.”

By the late autumn of 2012, under Wheeler and the Mohammad brothers’ direction, Firewater opened in Charlotte’s University City neighborhood.

In a pattern starkly reminiscent of the old Checkers’ fortunes, those enterprises have had their peaks and valleys. When Molly Reitter of Lake Norman Publications reviewed it in 2014, Firewater was on the verge of opening its third location. As of 2017, the original location is the only one under Wheeler and the Mohammads’ auspices.

Setbacks and searches for silver linings are nothing new to either partnering party. Ahmad Mohammad is an elder statesman in the locale and the industry, each of which he has been a part of for three-plus decades. As such, from Wheeler’s perspective, collaborating with him is not unlike aiding a John Brophy or a John Marks in their tutelage of a hockey team.

“Not only the leadership role, but more the failures or bumps in the road I experienced, helped me more,” he said.

As it is, if only by happenstance, the original Firewater represents both of the lives, eras and millennia Wheeler has spent in Charlotte. Mohammad’s fanaticism for football’s Carolina Panthers makes the bar section a hotspot for watching major sports telecasts (including, most recently, the NFL Draft). That allows for spots where people may be sporting athletic apparel and occasions where raw emotion is not unexpected.

Then there are other places in the building where business and formalwear are the norm. A private dining lounge hosts a multitude of gatherings that call for tablecloths, flowers, candles and less animation from the attention seekers and givers.

Another one of Firewater’s tamer sections is a “lake room” that lives up to its name through the view. The water in sight is warmer than, say, the ice at North Charleston Coliseum, and so are the hearts of the people looking down on it.

Even if there were sarcastic serenades in earshot, Wheeler’s turn to take and transform it has long passed. Likewise, the view of the North Carolina hockey landscape has evolved before his eyes from a unique perspective.

When Wheeler parted with the Checkers, the NHL’s Hurricanes were halfway through the first season at their new arena in Raleigh. They had spent the previous two at the Greensboro Coliseum, which forced the AHL’s Carolina Monarchs to cut their stay short.

By 2010, the Checkers brand got the same ECHL-to-AHL upgrade, as the Canes took the opportunity to move their top prospects closer to home. In turn, the current calendar decade has been the first in which both of the sport’s top two leagues have fielded a team in the state simultaneously.

Though he admits he does not frequent the current Checkers, Wheeler admires the way the local fan base has evolved.

“It has grown with the influx of Northerners who have relocated to the region,” he said. “Pool that with the old-timers who never left and former AHL Checkers who stayed and made Charlotte home, and it has given quality youth coaching and an excitement around the game.

“The Checkers moving to the AHL has helped tremendously, as there is the chance to watch future stars and/or reassignments of NHL players rehabbing.”

The transplanting Northerners and former players sticking around are two of Wheeler’s own demographics. But as the hockey gods would have it, one of the top figures in North Carolina’s icebreaking age could not garner similar gratification on the ice as the advocates have reaped off of it. Playing in the final stages of the pre-Hurricanes period, he logged 66 games in IHL and AHL call-ups.

Still, he delivered 70-plus points three times in as many cities where the sport was looking to cement a following. In his final year as a regular skater, he tallied 62 and added 11 in the playoff run to Charlotte’s Riley Cup.

And because he decided to keep the pegs down in the area, rather than the arena, he has easy access to moments that reopen the pleasure section of his memory bank. Case in point: December 5, 2015, when he, Marks and others savored a ceremony at an AHL game as part of their 20-year championship reunion.

“Which was nice,” he said, “and my kids really enjoyed the game and scoreboard interviews.”

The fanfare’s fleeting return satisfied his craving. These days, the Bangin Shrimp is more likely to command an encore.

“I do find myself thinking about what could have been, as I see old teammates and friends still in the game,” Wheeler said, “but I’ve been good about not living in the past.”

Alexis Crossley racing to sustain fitness — her own and others’

Just a little more.

Alexis Crossley comes from a household and neighborhood where craving, pursuing and doling out more enrichment is the norm. Especially if that enrichment comes via competitive exercise.

The way she recounts her upbringing in Cole Harbour, N.S., on the outskirts of Halifax — and the way she represents the place as one of its products — one might think anything less would draw a wave of concerned glances.

Reached by Pucks and Recreation nearly a full year after garnering her bachelor’s in biology from Boston University, Crossley is still suppressing senioritis in pursuit of another academic milestone. She is up for a master’s degree in urban affairs this spring.

Seven weeks after her final game as a Terrier, she is still following the daily springtime regimen of the program’s non-seniors. She has her first attempt at the Trans Am Bike Race in June to think about.

A second-year transfer out of New Hampshire, Crossley has already amassed five years of the college athletic experience. Most NCAA women’s hockey players will have decelerated to a studies-only regimen at this stage of their fourth year on campus. But with the rigorous cycling tour on the horizon, she has made a need out of a want by joining BU’s slated returnees for 2017-18 in the weight room.

“After finishing a college hockey career, it’s hard when all of the girls start off their postseason training and you can’t join them anymore,” she said. “But luckily, I’ve had something like the Trans Am Bike Race to motivate me and keep me competitive.

“And it’s nice to have it so close to after finishing my college career because, one, I’m still in really good physical shape from my season and from all of the training I’ve done over the course of last year for hockey. And two, I still get to get into the gym and see the girls all the time and watch them work hard and get better for next season, too.”

After a season that saw three senior forwards combine for 51 goals and Crossley lead the blue-line brigade with 21 points, BU will task as many as 16 holdovers with filling those spacious skates. Crossley has her own foundation in place for her next daunting-by-design endeavor. And she has not relinquished the team-based strings in the process, either.

In tandem with her father, Brad, Crossley will cover the 10-state Trans Am trail to raise money for the IWK Health Centre in Halifax. The two will be one of only seven registered pairs in an event that also features 146 individual racers representing 22 countries.

Six weeks ahead of the race’s June 3 beginning, the Crossleys have already fulfilled one-fifth of their $30,000 fundraising goal. “And that keeps increasing every day,” Alexis noted.

Meanwhile, the timing bar is set near the ceiling. Last year’s individual first-place finisher, Lael Wilcox, completed the tour in 18 days and 10 minutes. The tandem participants in the 2016 race took anywhere from 25 to 87 days.

“We’re aiming to get about 160 miles in per day, give or take a few depending on weather and other circumstances,” Crossley said. “The ultimate goal would be to finish in 26 days, but I guess maybe a more realistic one might be 28.”

At the time of her interview, her preparation rate was in a footrace with the pledge rate of Team Crossley’s supporters. As she continues to recover from a postseason shoulder surgery, she has yet to transfer her training from stationary bikes to the outdoors.

“Once a week, I’m trying to get in a long bike anywhere that’s above two-and-a-half, three hours, just to try and get my body ready to sit on the bike for 12-plus hours a day,” she elaborated. “Right now, it’s all about having my butt used to the seat and my head used to looking up ahead of me.”

On the figurative front, what is ahead is unclear to Crossley. With her fiancé accepting a job on the University of Arizona men’s basketball coaching staff, she will relocate to Tucson on the other side of her month-long bike tour.

For now, once there, she plans on shaping her near future on the fly.

“Hopefully, a future job opportunity will come my way and it’ll be something that I am passionate about,” she said. “I’ve always aspired to be a dentist, so I’m not counting that out of my future, either.”

Exemplary energy

For all of the mystery ahead, there are many well-defined motivators in Crossley’s background. The reigning BU co-captain is keen on continuing her exemplary leadership in a campaign to curtail childhood obesity.

Both of Crossley’s parents witness the best and worst effects of early life habits as elementary-level teachers in the Halifax Regional School Board. Her father has made physical education his day job for 25 years. Her mother, Leslie, oversees the fifth-grade class at Bel Ayr Elementary in Dartmouth, N.S.

“They have one of the most important jobs in our small communities, where they are creating the future,” she said. “And I think that their role in the education system also inspires me to want to make others around me better and teach people about important things, such as childhood obesity, obesity in general and the importance of living healthy, active lifestyles.”

Brad Crossley has set a straightforward precedent in his household. He will go into the Trans Am Bike Race with a smattering of previous intensive cycling excursions, including triathlons and transcontinental tours, already on his transcript. When the season is ripe for hockey, and thus for taking his gym-teacher’s instinct to the ice, pulling him away from the rink rivals shoveling two feet of wet snow in difficulty.

Alexis Crossley and her three brothers have each translated their inherited puck passion to college- or junior-caliber skill sets. Neither she nor any relatives have let obesity hang around their personal ponds since the puck dropped on their respective games of life.

Still, as Statistics Canada concluded in 2014, Nova Scotia was second only to Newfoundland and Labrador among the nation’s most obese provinces. The rate there was a startling 27.8 percent the time of the study. Neighboring New Brunswick was third at 26.4 percent.

Through her father’s work in the local school system, in particular, the comparatively inert behaviors of several students have never escaped Crossley.

“I noticed how much the current generation spends so much of their time indoors or playing on an iPad or asking parents to use their cell phones to play games,” she said.

“I wasn’t a little kid too long ago, but I can’t remember a day where I didn’t want to go outside and run around and play games. So I hope that through this we can help promote a little bit more of that and try to create some healthy, active lifestyle thoughts in my community at home and maybe in other communities surrounding that.”

Cole Harbour already bears multiple examples of exertion yielding exhilarating rewards, and both Brad and Alexis have been in on the production. Brad coached the Dartmouth Subways Midget AAA team when, in 2001-02, Sidney Crosby came through the ranks en route to NHL superstardom.

Nathan MacKinnon, who went first overall in the 2013 draft eight years after Crosby achieved the same distinction, is one year younger than Alexis. In turn, the two crossed daily paths at school and even played together in organized hockey before breaking off into their respective single-gender divisions.

“I was fortunate to grow up in Cole Harbour, where probably every other kid on my block played hockey in the Cole Harbour minor hockey association,” Crossley mused.

Of Crosby and MacKinnon, she added, “Just sharing the hometown with them and having such big role models come out of my town as far as athletics and sports goes, I think they are just extra pieces to the puzzle in this battle that new generations are facing in regards to healthy and active lifestyles, and hopefully my dad and I can contribute to that as well.”

In Cole Harbour, the phrases “Brad Crossley” and “contribute” have all but meshed the way the names “Sidney Crosby” or “Nathan MacKinnon” go with “highlight-reel play.” Beyond his gym classes, the elder Crossley has also served as an assistant men’s hockey coach at nearby Dalhousie University and devoted untold hours to youth programs.

In addition, Alexis noted, her father suggested the IWK Health Centre as the charity of choice when she first expressed interest in the Trans Am race a year ago.

“My dad had a contact with a player’s mother who works at the IWK, and he kind of brought the idea up,” she said.

“He has always gone above and beyond for everyone in my community at home or in the hockey world. He’s always spending hours and hours in the rink with local kids, teaching them some extra hockey skills or putting in an extra hour on the ice after a practice or renting some ice out for some of the local kids to go out and get better.

“So just watching him in that regard has motivated me to go above and beyond with my community, no matter where I am, and do anything I can to help people out.”

Crossley all but grew up together with the current incarnation of the IWK, which caters specially to women and children from the three Maritime Provinces. She was two years old when, in 1996, the old Isaac Walton Killam Hospital for Children joined forces with Grace Maternity Hospital.

The newly singular institution, whose website includes a 43-minute video on childhood obesity, has since built its reputation as a go-to center for family care. Through her proximity to Halifax and her strenuous upbringing, Crossley got to know that firsthand, particularly in the orthopedic ward.

“The IWK is somewhere I’ve unfortunately visited a few times as a kid due to injuries from being physically active,” she said. “But I hope that I can encourage others to be active and stay physically active and hopefully not have to visit the children’s hospital due to health concerns.”

Breaking away

The stationary bike Crossley has stapled herself to in her initial phases of Trans Am prep sure beats an IWK bed. But her competitive pangs will not taper off in full until she loses the confines of the gym and fully simulates her late-spring-to-early-summer plans.

The fourth annual Trans Am Bike Race will start on the first Saturday of June in Astoria, Ore., culminating in Yorktown, Va. In between, the trail covers Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky. Cyclists will soak in the likes of Yellowstone National Park, the Continental Divide and Mammoth Cave as part of their scenic odyssey.

“I’m excited to see different terrain and to climb some mountains, even though that’s going to be probably one of the most difficult parts of the race,” Crossley said. “I’m really excited to just take in the scenery and enjoy some fresh air and some peace of mind away from academics and the rigors of college athletics.

“It’s going to be a tough battle, but it’ll be a rewarding one and one that will allow me to have some of my own time and some thinking time and also some important bonding time with my dad, too.”

Yet even the hallowed landmarks of nature cannot fully tug Crossley away from the sense of a task at hand. The change of scenery may underscore a change of pace from her recent years of daily half-mental, half-physical biathlon in Boston. But she is using her last free moments in her adopted American community to prepare to join her father in representing their already famed Canadian locality.

Just a little more attention to Cole Harbour and a little more attention for their cause. That is the expressed greater goal.

“Even though it might not be to the extent that people may be aware of Crosby and MacKinnon, maybe we’ll be remembered for our efforts as well,” she said.