When it comes to grooming young players and bringing teenagers together from disparate backgrounds and regions of the country, the biggest challenge can be to have them all relate to one experience. In order to perform well, a team must buy into one common philosophy, one common mindset, in order to have one common goal. Which tends to be, to put it simply, winning games.
One of the reasons Loomis Chaffee got off to a lightning-fast 6-0 start to the season (they are now 7-1-2 after the Avon Old Farms Christmas Classic) is the bonding experience the team had over the Thanksgiving weekend while together visiting Germany and Austria.
Part hockey trip, part history trip and part team-building exercise, the trip saw the teenagers -- some of whom had never been to Europe before -- visit the Alps, watch a German league game and shop at a famous Christmas market. That's on top of playing some hockey, of course.
But seeing the sites of German concentration camps from World War II and visiting markers commemorating mass grave sites left an indelible impression on most.
Coach J.R. Zavisza wrote about the 10-day trip, and we've accompanied some of the photos below with his comments as well as those from players Alex Krause and Cody Hoban, who found the experience to be memorable.
"Whether at the rink, on the plane, at the restaurant, in the mountains, at a historic site, on the bus or at the Christmas markets, Loomis Hockey’s 2019 trip to Germany and Austria created unforgettable memories for the 27 team members, three coaches and 10 families that spent nine days together traveling."
"The group set up home base for the first five days and nights in Fussen, Germany, which allowed for slowing it down and living the Euro lifestyle, enjoying the cafes, shops, sights, and a lot of fresh eats by day, and playing hockey games in the vicinity by night."
"Leading up to the game in Garmish, the group spent the afternoon driving through the Alps in Austria, seeing the Zugzpitze along the way before spending several hours in picturesque Innsbruck. In Innsbruck, the group visited the first Christmas Market of the trip and received a state-of-the-art tour of the Hofkirche containing former Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I’s cenotaph. That night, the team competed in Garmish, again coming away with a big 9-1 win in the now-enclosed ’36 Olympic rink. Two nights later, the boys wrapped up competition with another solid 7-1 win in Peiting."
Visits to sites of great historical importance were a big reason for the team's trip. Wrote Zavisza:
"The historic experience was just as central to the trip as the hockey and cultural experience. The WWII era took center stage as we visited Zeppelin Field and the Nazi Documentation Center in Nuremburg as well as Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial."
"To stand in a gas chamber, to see the disturbing images of pain and death, and to stand where Hitler once addressed his people at mass rallies in Nuremburg, was to emotionally connect to the past in a way that many of our players had never experienced before. These visits were perhaps the most important pieces of the entire trip."
"The final three days and nights were spent in Munich with a day trip to Nuremberg."
"Overall, the group visited several churches, Neuschwanstein Castle, World War II-related sites, the site of four Olympic Games (Garmish ’36, Munich ’72, Innsbruck ’64 and ’76), and three Christmas markets. Throughout the trip, the group enjoyed a mix of free and structured time, and our most frequent coming together place was the local fountain."
"The value that this trip has already had toward bringing this team tightly together is enough to make it worth it. But it is the memories that have been built that will last forever and will always provide this group with a special bond."
For Krause, a third-year forward from California, the biggest impression was left on him by seeing the labor camps, and actually walking through the historical sites: "The experience to me was extremely eye-opening. You can talk a lot about a place, you can read a lot, you can hear a lot, you can watch a lot, but it’s not like going there."
For Hoban (Guilford, Conn.), Innsbruck and Munich's Christmas markets made an impression, but for him the highlight was how it all brought the team closer together: "I just really liked how we were all together, the guys, if we were stuck anywhere together over Thanksgiving break for 10 days, we’d become a lot closer and a lot of us knew each other before. But, really, with the new guys it helped us bond and create that relationship with each other, which is great."
Paul Grant is an editor and a writer for HockeyJournal.com and Seamans Media. He previously oversaw hockey content at ESPN.com and Sporting News. You can connect with him at pgrant@hockeyjournal.com.
