For Hockey Travel Teams the Miles and Smiles Add Up

By Steve Lawrence

Ithink that there were a number of reasons Doug Levine was happy to speak with me while en route to Bu alo on Friday. One, we have been friends for 20plus years. Two, he was very excited that his daughter, Lucy, and her teammates on the Syracuse Valley Eagles Girls 14U Tier 1 AAA Hockey team were in the car, heading to the USA Hockey New York State tournament. ree, he had two teenage girls in the car with him, and they were both wearing headphones and had little interest in interacting with him. Being a part of the Eagles' hockey program really puts the “travel” in travel team. Tryouts for the team took place last March, the team starting holding practices in June, and in Doug’s words, “ ey dove into games at the end of August, playing in tournaments all over the Northeast.” When all is said and done, the team will have played approximately sixty games. For Doug and Treva Levine, it is, according to Doug, a “divide and conquer” endeavor. While 13-year-old Lucy has her own set of needs regarding her hockey life, Gri n, her 15-year-old brother, also plays AA hockey and is a freshman on the Ithaca High School team. When Doug started verbally crunching the monetary numbers involved — team fees, hotels, gas, food, equipment, times two — it spelled out a major family commitment. Doug stated, “It runs well into the thousands. If they weren't totally into it, we wouldn't be doing it.” ere is some car-pooling involved, given there are eight girls from Ithaca on the Syracuse team. Lucy Levine, e team also draws girls from Binghamton, Skaneateles and a few other towns, and Levine pointed out that “there's a lot of commitment involved on everyone's part — parents, players and coaches.” e he y investment of time and money o ers — ideally — not only higherlevel competition but top-shelf coaching as well. at is de nitely the case with the Eagles, and according to Levine, “ e level of coaching they're getting is amazing — a dream team of coaches.” e head coach is Ryan Smart, who played Division I hockey (at Cornell from 1994–98) and Ben Syer (the Big Red's current associate head coach) also helps out. Mitch Major (the high school coach at Skaneateles), Trevor Bauer and Stacy Davignon (both former college players) put in hundreds of hours as well. All of those coaches have at least one daughter on the team (Smart's twin daughters are on the team), and Levine calls that line-up “All-Star level coaching.”

Kayla Gerson, Emmy Chiuton-Black, Vera Camel and Heather Gao are all forwards, McKenna Syer and Sonia Enns play defense, and Shannon McClure is a goalie.

Doug handed the phone over to Sonia Enns, and I asked her if hockey was an allconsuming force in her life. She answered, “I also play [junior varsity] soccer, and this year I have started playing lacrosse.” (Lucy Levine also plays those two other sports.) When asked what she gains from being a multi-sport athlete, Sonia o ered, “I like the conditioning part of it, I like improving my strength and balance, and most importantly, I don't want it to be all hockey, all the time and get burned out.”

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