Volunteers and participants with the Hershey Therapeutic, Adaptive and Wheels on Ice group
A daughter’s Christmas gift to her father turned out to be the best present her brother ever received. At the time, none of them would have guessed it.
Don Maclaren of Bainbridge laughed as he told about the tickets his daughter, Shaina, gave him to a Hershey Bears hockey game, saying it was his son, Joel, who fell in love with the game.
“When can we do this again? When can we do this again?” Joel begged, according to Don. “He had such a good time at the game.”
That led to many Bears games a year. While Joel loved it, his sister was sometimes bored. A few years in, she took a walk around the concourse, where a stand for Hershey Heroes caught her eye. She looked more closely. Hershey Heroes is a hockey team for special needs participants.
She came back to her dad and her brother and said, “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but …” She made the right choice to tell them. It launched a passion.
Joel, 19, is on the autism spectrum. A senior in high school, Joel soon joined not only the Hershey Heroes, but also the “Therapeutic, Adaptive and Wheels on Ice” group, so he could get even more time to perfect his skating.
He arrives on the ice for therapeutic skating fully decked out in hockey gear, pads and a stick. Volunteers keep him engaged with chatter, which his dad says diverts his fears so that Joel can skate around the rink over and over throughout the hour.
Such Confidence
The therapeutic skating group started about five years ago.
Cindy Thomasson, a former board member for the Hershey Figure Skating Club, founded the group and modeled it after one started by former Olympic champ Dorothy Hamill at the Krieger Institute in Baltimore. Thomasson and current Hershey Figure Skating Club director Melissa Spittler, who helps coach the therapeutic skaters, said that their program is the only one they know of in central Pennsylvania.
It runs on volunteerism. Thomasson, a physician’s assistant in cardiology at Penn State Lancaster, formerly worked in orthopedics at Penn State Hershey, where she recruited volunteers, many who are medical and physician assistant students. Other volunteers include hockey players, clubs and community members.
The therapeutic group skates every Thursday afternoon on six-week cycles at either the Hersheypark Arena or the Giant Center. Participants pay $79 for each six-week session, and the Hershey Figure Skating Club subsidizes ice-time costs.
On a recent Thursday, the ice was filled with participants and volunteers, some navigating the slippery surface with walkers, others pushing hockey sticks, some flying forward and backward with finesse. One young woman was being pushed in her wheelchair around the rink.
Emily Shifflet, 27, of Hummelstown, who suffers from Rett syndrome—a rare genetic neurological disorder—cannot speak or move. She is known as the “Eye Gaze Artist,” for the paintings she creates through eye movements.
She cocked her head to the side as volunteers wheeled her around the rink in her wheelchair. Her father Robert noted that she “loves to spin.” She made her debut at a Hershey Bears game recently, and since she is now older than most of the players, her father jokingly calls her a “cougar.”
It’s participants like Emily, Joel and 9-year-old Parker Gilbert of Hershey who make each Thursday so rewarding for Thomasson and Spittler.
“What I see it helping these kids with is balance, following directions and making friends,” Thomasson said.
“We took it on because we believe that ice skating can be for everybody,” Spittler said. “I think sometimes there is a stigma around ice skating that, ‘oh, it’s really hard and the ice is really slippery.’ It increases [core] muscles and their stamina, and, overall, it gives participants such a confidence level of them doing things on their own.”
Parker, who has autism, has been part of the program since it started.
“I think it’s giving Parker confidence,” his mother Patsy said. “Before, when he first started, he was so scared of falling, so rigid. When he had a goal of what he wanted to accomplish, it gave him something to work for.”
He has a big goal—to play hockey, maybe as a goaltender—and he gave himself five sessions to become a goalie. Lately, though, he’s reconsidering, thinking that playing offense might be a better fit.
“Think about it,” he said. “Why would I even sign up for ice skating if I don’t even want to do it?”
Among the grad student volunteers helping participants around the ice—the group strives to have two volunteers per participant—are some volunteers who came up through the Learn-To-Skate and therapeutic programs.
Katarina Dovat of Hummelstown learned to skate in 2009 when she moved to the area. She went up through the Hershey Figure Skating Club and has been volunteering with Learn-To-Skate since 2016. Now a college student, she decided to volunteer with the therapeutic group as well.
“I feel accomplished when I see skaters who are able to skate without a walker or they are able to do more advanced moves,” she said.
Owen Zeager of Hershey, who started by using a walker on the ice with the therapeutic group, advanced first to the Hershey Heroes and now plays for the Hershey Junior Bears in-house hockey team. A former Children’s Miracle Network baby who was born with health issues, Owen comes back most weeks to help and encourage others in the therapeutic program.
On a recent night, Owen mugged for the camera, pushed the wheelchair, sped back and forth expertly, and cheered on everyone on the ice.
Something Special
For special needs participants like Joel, Parker and Owen who love hockey, Hershey Heroes offers even more opportunity to learn and practice the game.
It’s the seventh year for this special hockey club for people with any type of special needs—physical or mental. Fifteen to 20 participants learn skills and play in a couple of games a year, practicing Saturday afternoons at Hersheypark Arena from October through March for $100 a season. The next-closest team is located in York, with others in the Philadelphia area and State College.
Coach Michael Miller, who manages sales training for a medical device company, started the team about seven years ago for his now 20-year-old son Nate, who has Down’s syndrome. Nate loved hockey, but the closest team was in Baltimore. For three years, Nate and his dad were up by 5:30 a.m. on Saturdays to make the drive to Baltimore.
“In the end, certainly that was the genesis of this—seeing their program, learning from them, taking that and building our own program here,” Miller said.
Like the therapeutic skating group, Hershey Heroes relies on volunteers who are on-ice buddies.
“We have them help with the players’ skill development, but it’s so much more than that—you’re developing relationships,” Miller said. “The amount of give-back is really pretty extensive. The feeling that you get for helping someone—it really is something special.”
Hershey Heroes is part of the ASHA, the American Special Hockey Association. The therapeutic skating group is under the adaptive skating arm of the USFSA, the U.S. Figure Skating Association. Both groups have seen participants who came to them not only learn to skate, but to flourish at it.
“Three-quarters of these kids never thought about ice skating let alone playing hockey,” Miller said. “They never had it as a dream. Now, it’s not just an option—we’re making it a reality. Then comes the confidence, the discipline, the physical fitness, the relationships and everything else. That’s what makes it so special. If I could do this for a living, I would.”
For more information on the Therapeutic Skating and Wheelchairs on Ice group, visit www.hersheyfigureskating.org/therapeutic.
For more information on Hershey Heroes, contact Michael Miller at HersheyHeroeshockey@gmail.com or at www.Hersheyheroesspecialhockey.com.
For more information on Emily Shifflet’s art, visit www.eyegazedesignsbyemily.com.
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