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Wings' Glendening to kids: Enjoy your summer |
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Out on the ice at Joe Louis Arena with young hockey hopefuls Tuesday at the Detroit Red Wings youth camp, Detroit center Luke Glendening offered some interesting advice to the youngsters.
Put away the skates, kids. It’s August.
“Summer wasn’t hockey season for me,” Glendening explained. “It was baseball and football season at this time, so I just never did it.”
This specific time of year when he was growing up was reserved for the gridiron.
“I got to win a state championship in football with (his brother Joe) and it’s something that we’ll share forever,” said Glendening, who played fullback and cornerback for East Grand Rapids, Mich. high school.
Even though he’s made it as an NHLer, Glendening wouldn’t trade those high-school football memories for anything.
“I don’t know, there’s just something about them,” he said of playing high school football in Michigan. “I think it’s the community rallying behind you and school hasn’t started yet, so it’s just kind of all your friends.
“I don’t have an exact answer for it but there’s definitely something to them. My town was pretty cool. It used to be a ghost town on Friday nights when we would play. So I just miss the Friday (game) nights, definitely not the practices.”
It wasn’t just football that Glendening participated in away from the rink. According to him, it was everything under the sun in terms of athletic opportunities for children.
“Dance recitals, I was in everything,” Glendening said. “I was in three dance recitals when I was at boarding school (at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeview, Ct.), so that was my last performance.”
He worries that children are being funnelled into one sport at the expense of others at too young an age and therefore aren’t getting the same life experiences that he was able to enjoy in his formative years.
“I do,” Glendening said. “The amount of people who make it to pro sports is very small and I think you should enjoy your experience, whether that’s being in plays or musicals or doing, I don’t know, whatever you’re interested in.
“I think it’s important to be well rounded and have a plethora of things to do.”
Glendening is certain that his broad experiences both on the stage and on the playing fields helped him evolve into a better hockey player.
“I just think it helps your athleticism,” Glendening said. “I think I can still get better at hockey just because this is probably my sixth, seventh year of just playing hockey.
“I think that’s helped me a lot, but I don’t have any scientific facts on that.”
Hicketts Next?
Canada recently wrapped up its summer world junior camp and there is speculation that defenseman and Red Wings prospect Joe Hicketts, a member of last season’s gold medal winner, could be in line to captain the Canadian squad at the 2016 tournament in Finland.
If so, Hicketts will be carrying on a long-standing tradition of future Red Wings wearing the C for Canada at the world junior tournament.
In the past, Jesse Wallin (1998), Martin Lapointe (1993), Steve Chaisson (1987), Dale McCourt (1977) and Fern LeBlanc (1976) have served as Canadian world junior captain.
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