There is a version of this where the athlete arrives, poses, gives a speech about hard work and leaves. He did the opposite.
Everyone has seen the other version of this. A professional athlete turns up at a youth programme, stands for photographs, says something about hard work, and goes. The children remember that somebody famous came. They do not remember a word of it.
Cameron Gaunce did something else.
The former NHL defenceman and TSN analyst arrived at Ted Reeve and stepped onto the ice beside campers who in some cases had never worn skates. He ran drills. He demonstrated skating mechanics, fixed stick positions, and crouched down beside children who could not find their balance to explain what an edge actually does.
“These kids have never had a coach,” Gaunce says. “Not a hockey coach, not any kind of coach. For a lot of them this is the first time an adult has watched them do something physical and told them specifically what they did well.”
What that attention is worth is hard to put a number on and impossible to miss in the room. Children who arrived with their heads down were skating with visible confidence by the middle of the week. A seven year old who spent the first sessions holding the boards was weaving through cones by the Friday.
In the dryland block on media day he sat down with Councillor Brad Bradford for a question and answer session run entirely by the campers. They asked what the NHL was like, how you handle losing, and whether he had ever been frightened on the ice.
“One kid asked me if I ever fell down during a real game,” Gaunce says. “I told him I fell down all the time. He looked genuinely relieved.”
Asked what his favourite thing about hockey was, he gave an answer that had nothing to do with winning. “My favourite thing about hockey is not being good at hockey, it’s spending time together with friends. I would imagine you didn’t all know each other before showing up here this morning, but by the end of the week you’re going to spend a bunch of time together, make some memories, and hopefully that’s something you can continue going forward.”
Andrew Adair is careful about how much of this he attributes to Gaunce. The equipment, the ice, the curriculum and the volunteers would do the work on their own. But there is a dimension no amount of programming supplies.
“Cameron shows these kids that the world they are stepping into is real,” Adair says. “That people at the highest level care about them. That their first wobbly steps on the ice matter to somebody.”
My favourite thing about hockey is not being good at hockey. It's spending time with friends.
Two organisations, one in the classroom and one at the rink, exploring a pathway that carries a student from a school assembly to a pair of skates.
Four days of ice and dryland, free lunch, and a full set of equipment for every camper.
Where the programme stands after its first three cycles, and what the numbers mean.
