The Rookies

In 1994, one of the greatest upsets in sporting history occurred on U.S. soil. It was then that a ragtag group of kids from the Minnesota suburbs joined up with a collection of “talent” from around the country to participate in the Junior Goodwill Games. There they somehow managed to defeat a loaded Iceland team that saw seven (!) players make it to the NHL.

That was fifteen years ago. Unbelievable.

The question remains; what have the USA Ducks been up to since then? A lesser blogger might have just done a quick Google search to see what the team had been doing since they left Eden Hall Academy, but not this man. I crisscrossed the country in hopes of interviewing the whole gang.

The first installment caught up with Coach Bombay, Averman and Luis Mendoza; this one, with their team captain, Charlie Conway.

Charlie Conway

The only thing nice to say about sweltering Minnesota summer days is that at least it isn’t winter. Luckily for this young blogger my next interview would not be outside, roasting in the sun, but in the cool confines of Wakota Arena, a suburban Twin Cities hockey complex where Charlie Conway, the former captain of the Mighty Ducks, was running a summer camp for peewee hockey players.

I sat in the stands waiting for the afternoon session to finish, watching as Charlie and his fellow coaches worked on crashing the offensive zone and proper spacing once your team had control of the puck; Bombay’s special brand of offense was nowhere to be found. Wakota had always been a favorite stop of mine during summer league play, as the heat outside would cause a fine vapor to rise from the playing surface creating the illusion that you were skating through a dense ice jungle rife with danger around every crossover turn. Out from this mist glided our Dian Fossey, Charlie Conway, evidence that contact with the savage beasts that are adolescent boys could prove revelatory for all parties involved.

Charlie still maintained a semblance of his boyish good looks, but they now had to fight their way through the grizzled lines and thin layer of scruff that must have come from working everyday with kids and their, undoubtedly, overbearing parents. He didn’t bother to take off his skates as we chatted on the rubber matting between the benches and the locker room, as he only had a few minutes to talk while the Zamboni cleaned the ice.

His passion for the kids he coached was unparalleled. The other coaches at the camp drank their concession stand coffee in silence as Conway eagerly discussed the most intricate details of his plan to help even the most struggling player become competent. He was following in the footsteps of his mentor and like Bombay his current profession wasn’t his first choice, although he was in no way forced into the matter.

I had learned from Coach Bombay that although Charlie had expressed an early interest in coaching, he had attempted to make his way in the corporate world. With a degree in Economics from the University of Minnesota, and an ever-present affinity for athletics Charlie found a job working as an analyst for Gart Sports which later merged with, and was renamed, The Sports Authority. It was short-lived.

Charlie laughed as he recalled his time with The Sports Authority. His hard work and affable character resulted in a promotion shortly after he was hired. Now with a handful of people underneath him he was able to institute a game plan to correct the one fundamental flaw he saw with the company. They were a business about sports without all the beneficial aspects sports brought to the table. There was no sense of teamwork, just a group of people competing for promotions and raises while communicating as little information as possible lest they give their coworker an advantage.

Sports Authority was no Google or Digg. They didn’t adhere to the newer, more progressive way of doing business and, according to Charlie, it showed in the morale of everyone in the office. He attempted to make work more fun and was willing to criticize his boss and his boss’s boss to get his message across. Even when he was told directly by several of his superiors to cease and desist, he continued with his campaign. Soon he was called into his manager’s office and told to clear out his desk.

Maybe he had overextended himself with his work schedule—it left him fatigued every day—or the additional hours he spent planning innovative ways to make tasks more team-oriented and fun. No matter what the root cause was, he broke down mentally. He doesn’t remember much of what happened, but the rest of his office will never forget it.

He started quacking.

Not in the righteous way that Gordon Bombay might, but in a slow maniacal way that grew louder and louder and more and more disturbing. He began ranting about company policy and screamed “Captain Blood” at his boss over and over again until he was taken away and placed in a psychiatric ward.

The parents of those on his team are informed of this incident that happened many years ago, and he makes sure to address each parent about the subject, but any initial uneasiness has since passed. That doesn’t mean his coaching tenure isn’t without its rough patches: Rumors have swirled of possible sexual perversions, as they often do when a single man takes the time to teach kids. It added fuel to the fire that of the competitive local teams his was the only one that was sure to have girls on it, but, unsurprisingly, there is no basis for these claims.

As I watched the rest of the practice, something struck me. Charlie gets great joy out of helping these kids learn and grow, but, as some parents confirm, frustration appears to creep in at an inordinate rate. It became clear that he expects too much out of them. He expects them to be as fiercely loyal, to subsume themselves to the will of the team at the age of twelve. He wants to make this a life-changing experience, he wants to impress upon them some of the revelations he had at that age, but for most it is completely lost. They just want to play hockey. To skate, to shoot, to occasionally score. He wants them to be like him, but more importantly he wants to be Gordon to their little Charlies.