WHAT IS SLED HOCKEY?
Origin: Invented in Sweden in the 1960s and developed into a competition in Norway in the 1970s for youths and adults with disabilities to play hockey.
The sled: Under the seat are two skate blades about 6 inches long. Those who play offensive positions put the blades closer together for more speed. Those who play defensive position have the blades farther apart for more balance. The puck can be passed underneath the sled.
The sticks: Players use two cut-down hockey sticks, one in each hand. The puck is shot with the blade down. The other end of the stick has sharp metal picks that players use to push themselves up the ice, like a skier using poles.
The rules: They are nearly identical to regular ice hockey – three forwards, two defensemen and a goalie, on a regular-sized rink and same-sized nets. All line changes are the same, except players slide onto the ice instead of going over side boards. All the penalties are enforced as well, including one involving T-boning another sled.
Terminology: In all other parts of the world outside the U.S., the sport is known as “sledge” hockey.
Paralympics: The sport has been part of the Olympics for athletes with physical disabilities since 1994. The U.S. team fielded its first team in 1998, then won the gold at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City and 2010 Games in Vancouver, with a bronze in 2006. Men have had the only teams to date, but a first women’s competition is planned to be held in 2018. Russia is fielding its first team as the host country, and defeated the U.S., 2-1, in pool play. In Saturday’s gold-medal game, the U.S., which defeated rival Canada in the semifinals, will again play Russia, which defeated Norway in the semis. The game will air live on Channel 4 at 9 a.m.
More information: Follow the Kings Sled Hockey team at SoCalSledHockey.blogspot.com, on Twitter @SoCalSledHockey or at www.facebook.com/LAKingsSledHockey. The team practices at the L.A. Kings Icetown Rink at 10540 Magnolia Ave., Riverside.
RIVERSIDE >> Larney Johnson locked his arms into a position to where he could push himself up and out of his wheelchair, but he hesitated for a brief second.
In front of him on the ground was this contraption — about three feet of silver metal rods connected on one end to a black plastic bucket-shaped seat. A kayak-looking thing with skating blades beneath it was about to take him onto an ice rink.
“There’s really no graceful way to do this,” said Todd Jenkins, manager of the Los Angeles Kings Sled Hockey team, as he crouched down next to Johnson.
“You don’t get style points,” added his wife, Christie Jenkins, who had just fitted Johnson with some borrowed shoulder pads, elbow pads and a helmet with a face cage.
The 23-year-old from Inglewood who goes by “LJ” had encountered enough challenges in his life to this point, not the least of which surviving drive-by shooting when he was 15 that left him paralyzed below the waist.
Once Johnson got situated into the sled with the Jenkins’ help, he sat upright and asked that his legs be slightly bent at the knees. Todd used a hex wrench to make adjustments on the sled’s length and Christie got a roll of special tape to wrap Johnson’s feet around the end post.
Todd then attached a gadget with wheels on the bottom of the sled, pulled Johnson across the rubberized floor, up the ramp and onto the full-sized hockey rink.
Just like that, Johnson was a sled hockey player.
And the Jenkinses, showing even more grace and deserving of every style point possible, had another successful launch.
Just a couple days earlier, Johnson caught TV coverage of the U.S. Paralympic sled hockey team compete in Sochi, Russia. He was hooked. As the team moves into Saturday’s gold-medal contest against Russia, the Southern California sled hockey upstarts are more engaged to see if the U.S. can capture back-to-back championships.
The San Bernardino-based Jenkins family pulled this group together, inspired as an activity for their own son Nick, born 13 years ago with spina bifida. Quickly, they were helping other boys and girls and men and women, as young as 7 and as old as nearly 40, from all kinds of situations have put them in wheelchairs either from birth or a recent injury.
Johnson tracked down the Jenkinses on their Facebook page and drove himself a couple hours east down the 91 Freeway in rush-hour traffic for the new adventure at the Kings Icetown Rink for a practice and scrimmage.
One by one, the word, like the sled itself, is pushing forward.
“Hockey is already kind of a unique sport, and then there’s sled hockey, a niche of a niche sport,” said Christie Jenkins, an English teacher at San Gorgonio High. “But it’s really turning heads.”
Todd Jenkins is a stay-at-home dad, freelance writer and substitute teacher who finds managing this team pretty much a full-time job as far as fundraising, recruiting and publicizing what they’re doing.
In 2009, a family friend from the East Coast sent the Jenkinses video of what sled hockey looked like. Once Nick said he wanted to try it, they searched a team in the Inland Empire. When they couldn’t find one, they created it themselves.
“It takes kind of a crazy person to start one of these teams,” Christie said. “We didn’t know how it would happen, but it’s really fun now.”
Todd said he has seen Nick go from someone who was “somewhat timid” playing other wheelchair sports to where he has “lost weight and gotten stronger. This has really paid off.”
Christie says Nick “likes the athleticism. We have already treated him as a normal kid, having him do chores, making him figure out how to get it done and deal with these issues. It’s about disabilities, not inabilities.”
Other players on the team prove that on a regular basis.
Pedro Gomez-Ramos, born in Mexico and living in Loma Linda, deals with osteogenesis imperfecta — a genetic disorder also known as brittle bone disease. His left leg was amputated because of it.
During a recent tournament game, the 21-year-old assistant captain was checked into the boards and suffered a separated shoulder. Rather than have paramedics cut through his prized Kings jersey, he insisted they lift it off over his injured shoulder to preserve it from further damage.
Hans Blum, a 32-year-old Marine staff sergeant living in Wildomar with his wife and step kids, lost both legs after he was struck by a homemade explosive device while deployed in Afghanistan. His new teammate is retired Army vet Wesley Leon-Barrientos, 29, who comes in from Bakersfield. He lost both his legs to a roadside bomb during his third deployment to Iraq.
“I enjoy the contact sports, before and after I was wounded, and without missing a beat, hockey fits in perfect,” said Leon-Barrientos. “I also enjoy bringing my leadership skills and putting them to work on the ice and being able to lead by example with my team.”
Joshua Swope of Lakewood was watching a game in Ontario featuring the Kings’ minor-league affiliate when the Jenkinses came across him in the handicapped access section of the arena. The Jenkinses have found more players through physical therapists, abilities expos, even at the supermarket.
“We seem to always be sizing up new players,” Christie said.
In forming two rosters — one for those younger than 18 and an adult team — they have also collaborated with teams and players who involved in similar sled hockey teams in Bakersfield and Oxnard.
Certified as a full Paralympic sport club, the Jenkinses’ program connected with the Kings and soon received a $5,000 donation from the Kings Care Foundation. That came in handy — the costs for sleds, for example, begin at $600 and can cost twice that for more customized versions.
Nearly half of the NHL teams sponsor and help equip sled teams now. At the 2013 Sled Hockey Classic in Pittsburgh in November, the Kings’ nine-person Division C team that included Jenkins, Barrientos, Gomez-Ramos and Swope, and led by player-coach Andrew Hodge and team captain Terry Miller, became the first from California to participate in the event with an NHL partner.
The Kings Sled Hockey team has also skated at Staples Center at the Kings Fan Fest prior to this season, and they will go again between periods at the Kings-Winnipeg game March 29.
“It was a no-brainer to get involved with their program,” said Chris Crotty, the Kings director of fan development. “This is all about continuing the growth of the sport of hockey in Southern California, and this is a killer program.”
Daryl Evans, the former Kings player and current broadcaster, has had a couple of chances to sit in the hockey sled practice.
“It was a humbling experience,” he said. “What some of those players can do as far as stick handling and passing, all the same kind of hand-eye coordination as a stand-up player, with much more demand on your core strength — they are like magicians.”
The Kings’ support give us “a lot of credibility as a program,” Christie Jenkins said. “Maybe by the 2018 Paralymics, we’ll have some players from the West Coast make the team. That’s the goal.”
The Kings Sled Hockey team has one regular female player, Summer Samuelson, who has been playing goalie. During the recent practice, another strong-minded woman decided she was ready, willing and able.
“I’ve never been to an ice rink before,” Jenna Rollman of Rancho Cucamonga confessed as the Jenkinses fitted her with equipment.
The 26-year-old Chaffey College student has been in a chair for only a year, suffering a cycling accident that put her in a situation where “I couldn’t put on my shoes, couldn’t roll over, I was like a baby.”
Her hands were red after the practice and she had lost a shoe, but she wasn’t discouraged.
“It’s not in my nature to give up,” she said. “I’m not afraid. The human body is capable of doing amazing things because we really don’t have limits. It makes me want to try new challenges like this.”
When Todd Jenkins wheeled Larney Johnson back off the ice at the end of the scrimmage, Johnson had even more of a commitment to continue.
“One step at a time, today is just the first day of training,” he said.
Johnson had already posted a video on his Instagram account (his handle is “LivingOnWheels”) of the U.S. national team playing in Russia. With it was his message: “YOU HEARD IT FIRST!! I, Larney L. Johnson IV Will Play For the USA Come 2018 In The Paralympics In Sled Hockey #NewGoal #Amazing #CantBelieveTheyHaveThis.”