By Juliana Yao and Alexa Willrich, Staff Reporters

During the shutdown of 2020, a small mentorship between senior AJ Carroll and then fourth grader Sebastian Capurro would kickstart a district-wide hockey program for building bonds between players at each school level.

The Conestoga Hockey Assist Mentoring Program, or CHAMP, was initiated this fall. Through the program, athletes from the girls and boys ice hockey teams cultivate younger players’ hockey skills during training sessions and practice. CHAMP was first brought forward when Carroll shared his memorable experience of coaching Capurro during the pandemic with the Conestoga ice hockey board. He had taken this role after Jean Capurro, Capurro’smother and current coordinator of CHAMP, reached out to the community about any high schoolers willing to coach her son.

“What AJ and Sebastian did was a baseline to create (CHAMP),” Capurro said. “It’s obviously about coaching and getting that support from a hockey perspective, but one of the additional things that came out of it was a friendship.”

This connection between the elementary, middle and high schools was what the board had already been looking for, and a mentorship was a way to do so while providing meaningful and unique experiences for the parties involved. 

“It’s pretty important because it does kind of foster that like community, that family aspect of the program that most programs really don’t have, and it kind of makes it feel different, makes it feel special,” Carroll said.

The players nourish the communal aspects of CHAMP through on and off ice events. The program’s first off-ice event was at Teegarden park on November 8, with a high turnout of around 40 kids from all the schools. Conestoga players manned stations, bonding and instructing the younger athletes as they rotated through.

“It (CHAMP) is good because you’re with your friends, playing hockey, learning stuff and bonding with kids older than you. It’s just kind of fun too,” Sebastian Capurro said.

On-ice the high schoolers attend the middle and elementary practices, coaching them with their hockey skills. By also being at games, the younger players are able to receive more training and look up to role models.

“A lot of the kids think it’s really cool that high school students are giving their time to be at their events,” Jean Capurro said.

 In addition to helping younger athletes, the high school players are able to develop leadership and communication skills of their own through CHAMP.

“It was incredible to see (the high school athletes) interact with the younger players,” head coach Ross Hyatt said. “They took the kids under their wings and it was great to see them latch on to this program and be excellent mentors.”

The program plans to arrange more on-ice activities and will create more off ice events when temperatures rise. While it primarily serves to increase the membership of the Conestoga ice hockey club, the players themselves have personal goals for CHAMP.

“I just hope that we can inspire some kids to love the sport of hockey, because I know a bunch of kids were excited to be there,” senior Jim Rosenblum said. “Others were just trying it for the first time. All sorts of different ranges of kids. So I think the most important part for me was just getting those kids to get more exposure to the game and really find their passion.”

Juliana Yao can be reached at [email protected].

Alexa Willrich can be reached at [email protected].