If you’re one of the few people in Maine who doesn’t have hockey in your DNA, chances are you probably know someone who does.

And you may have wondered: What possesses someone to get up at 4 a.m. for practice on ice during the dead of winter? How can playing hockey be worth hundreds of dollars per kid each year? Do sane people really play hockey year-round, even when the ocean is calling during the one good summer month? How do they even read their jampacked calendars and find time for work or school?

If you’re one of those parents or grandparents who grew up on skates — and every relative in every generation either played, coached, cheered or raised money, — then you already have the answers.

It’s tradition.

It’s camaraderie.

It’s competition.

It’s family bonding.

It’s life’s lessons.

It’s a long winter, so what else are you going to do?

And, apparently, hockey is contagious.

While generations of French names have made the rosters of local teams since the New World was settled, the Rotolico family hailing from Long Island, N.Y., several years ago came to the sport relatively late. Infected by Maine winters, one by one, each member of the family of four — male and female, child and parent — has laced up and now plays in a league.

“We started coming to the Maniacs games and sort of adopted them as our team and really got into hockey,” said Deb Rotolico. “Then T.J. (her son) wanted to play, and it just went from there.”

Unlike the indigenous Maine skaters, T.J. took on hockey as a long-in-the-tooth Pee Wee in the 11 to 12-year-old division. By then, most of his peers already had eight or nine years of rink time. Then Dad caught the bug. At age 40, Tony Rotolico joined a men’s league in Falmouth at about the same time, said Deb.

A year later, little sister, Tia, decided she could play, too. “She went through cheerleading, tumbling, soccer,” said Deb. “But she really took to hockey, and this is her third year.”

And then it happened.

Last year, for Mother’s Day, the family brought Mom into the act. According to Deb, her husband, Tony, asked the kids, ‘What would you think if Mom played? What if Mom did something for herself?”

“So for Mother’s Day, there I was with about $700 worth of gear,” said Deb. “At first I was really nervous. It’s not as easy as it looks. But then it felt great.”

Rotolico described the adrenaline rush she got from competition, even though she plays on a team consisting of beginners only. “I can kind of skate, but I can’t really stop. That’s why I take the women’s clinic classes.”

So does Donna Rousseau. Despite being married to Gary Rousseau who has run the family hockey school and countless clinics for the past 25 years and being the mother of two grown boys who excelled in hockey and a 10-year-old daughter who has been skating since age 3, Donna always considered herself “the voice of balance.”

“When my boys were growing up, mothers didn’t do that,” said Rousseau. “We sat in the stands and cheered for our kids.”
Last year, Rousseau received a pair of skates for Christmas. But she resisted for a while.

“I really didn’t want to do it,” said Rousseau. “But then I tried it with some women who were practicing skills and didn’t have any pressure. And I actually had fun. I told my husband, ‘I hate it when you’re right.’”

Lessons beyond the game

Gary Rousseau is that true hockey native, whose father immigrated from Canada and brought his skates with him. Along with those skates came lots of insight, lots of advice, lots of time with his sons.

“Every Sunday morning during the summer, we’d get up at 5 in the morning and drive to Augusta, which was the only summer rink around here at the time,” recalled Gary. “It was a 40-minute ride to the rink, and we had a lot of conversations.”

When Gary became a father, he realized that his own dad wasn’t just teaching him the game of hockey. “It was a great way to learn commitment and set goals and physical fitness. It was my dad’s way of expressing to us how to become responsible adults.”

For Lisa Tiner, mother of three boys who have continued a long line of St. Pierre family hockey players, the travel time to tournaments throughout New England has created a bond that made chaotic schedules and huge financial sacrifices worthwhile.
When all three boys were playing at the same time several years ago, Tiner ran a day care and worked the league bingo nights. When their oldest son played goalie, her husband, Erik, traded in two sets of golf clubs for the extra equipment, joked Tiner.

All players are required to have elbow pads, knee pads, hip padding, shoulder pads, a helmet, shin guards, a stick and skates, and must constantly have their blades sharpened. Goalies require expensive equipment, and then there are the league fees. For one player, depending on age and level of competition, it could cost from about $200 for instructional programs to $900 for participation on elite travel teams. With travel teams comes out-of-pocket travel expenses, like gas, meals and hotels.

However, the Tiner family had no problem sharing plenty of family-bonding travel memories. Like the time Brandon, now a sophomore playing for Lewiston High School, and older brother, Erik, had their first tournament in Massachusetts and the family had a wreck en route.

“We had to go to a garage, get a rental car and dress in the car on the way to the rink,” said Erik, a senior at LHS. “We got there really late, and other parents were pulling us on the ice and helping us get our skates on.”

The boys also remember countless nights of knee hockey with other tournament family kids in a room generally provided by the hotel. They also enjoyed indoor pools while parents socialized.

All of the families acknowledge that youth hockey has its ugly side, too. The pushy, “schmoozy” parents. The pressure and stress on kids to compete too early for too long. The eight-month-long and now year-round season.

But they also agree that hockey brings their families together.

“You know where your boys are. You know who their friends are. You know who their friends’ parents are,” said Tiner. “And you spend a lot of time together. That’s worth a lot of peace of mind. I’m glad I’m through it, but I wouldn’t have wanted to miss any of it.”

Donna Rousseau grabs a hockey stick before taking to the ice at Ingersoll Arena Thursday night for a friendly pick-up game. “My daughter gave me skates for Christmas as asked me to please try and learn to play,” remembered Rousseau.

Donna Rousseau plays a game of pick-up hockey with other hockey moms at Ingersoll Arena on a recent Thursday night. “I hate it when my hubby is right,” laughed Rousseau. “He said I’d like it and I do!”

“Most of here are hockey moms,” said Donna Rousseau, right, as she got help getting into her protective pads from Cindy Landry.

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