Ed Snider's Cool Idea

Sabrina Carter and Paul Jones always loved sports.

Carter and Jones, seventh-graders at the Grover Washington Junior School in Olney, have participated in athletics their entire lives.

Carter had experience on the hardwood, playing girls basketball, while Jones enjoyed playing tailback on the football field.

But ice hockey was never part of their game.

Until last September, that is.

Carter and Jones are two of the students who took part in the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation program. The new activity welcomed youngsters from 15 city schools - 30 students at each school - and gave them the chance to learn a sport that was foreign to them.

Ice hockey is an expensive sport. The cost of getting ice time isn't cheap, and the equipment can be equally pricey.

So Snider, chairman of the Philadelphia Flyers, teamed with the School District of Philadelphia to put together the program to teach children the fundamentals of ice hockey and even throw in a little education.

The weekly program spans the school year, from September to June. The young hockey pupils, who attend such schools in the Northeast as Baldi, Disston and Holme, are in fifth, sixth and seventh grades.

On June 6, about 250 of the citywide participants gathered at the Flyers Skates Zone on Decatur Road in the Far Northeast to celebrate the end of the program's inaugural season. Taking part in the festivities were Snider and Flyers captain Keith Primeau.

"The best part about this program is that the kids learn more than just hockey," said John Creighton, a teacher at Grover Washington. "We had to pick the students who were good in school, because they participate in the program two days a week and they miss half days of school on those days.

"We wanted to make it fun for them. We wanted them to learn a sport that they wouldn't have learned if it wasn't for the program, and we also wanted it to be educational," Creighton added.

"So they come back to school (the next day) and talk about what they learned."

The program emphasizes educational aspects beyond the hockey lessons. Each week, the young hockey players have to learn the "word of the week." They learn the word at practice and then have to use it in a sentence in the classroom.

It's hockey with a focus on education. But that doesn't make it any less fun.

"I could skate, but I didn't know how to play hockey at all," Carter said. "Now, I'm good. I know how to skate better, I know my position, I've learned a lot and I've had lots of fun."

That's a goal of the hockey program.

Snider decided to start the project because most Philly kids never really had a chance to skate onto ice and give the sport a shot.

So far, so good.

Snider is known for being the hard-nosed head man of the Flyers, the guy who tries to get the most out of his professional hockey team. He was the owner of the team during those storied days in the '70s when the Flyers were known as the Broad Street Bullies, an era when the team was known as much for beating opposing players to a bloody pulp as it was for scoring goals and winning games.

But Snider wasn't so hard-nosed this season when a kid in his hockey program thanked him for the opportunity to play during intermission of a Flyers game. It really got to Ed Snider.

"That was the greatest feeling because you were giving these kids an opportunity to do something they've never done before," Snider said. "When the player came up to me to thank me, it was unbelievable. I mean, goose bumps."

Of course, there are plenty of young fans of baseball, football and basketball out there. It's quite possible the youth program will get more of them hooked on hockey.

"I think that a lot of kids, when they don't understand it, you know, they think it's stupid because they never were around it," said Bob Freed, another teacher at Grover Washington and a lifetime ice hockey player. "Once these kids got on the ice, I think they had a great respect for the game, a greater understanding of the game."

According to his teaching colleague Creighton, there initially were concerns whether each school would be able to find 30 students for the program. As it stands now, his school has 30 active members and a waiting list of 45 more.

"You don't know how many times I have one of the students come up to me and say, 'If someone's sick or can't make it, can I go in his place?'" Creighton said. "They want to be here.

Now, we picked the best students, the best students who wanted to go and who weren't already playing a sport at the school. But everyone's really getting behind this program and they're learning a lot."

And not just the students who are new to the sport.

Take Fox Chase resident Mark Freiberg, for example. The seventh-grader at the Philadelphia Academy Charter School has been playing hockey for a long time. He's also in the program, but not as a student - he's an adviser.

"It's hard to teach them because some of them don't even know how to skate," said Freiberg, a 12-year-old who has been playing hockey for six years. "But it's fun. It's neat to show kids who don't know what they're doing how to play. It can be hard, but it's a lot of fun, too. I like it a lot."

On June 6 at the Flyers Skate Zone, the youngsters had a special star in their midst - Flyers player Keith Primeau, who gladly showed the students a thing or two about the sport.

Primeau, who has been recovering from a concussion that sidelined him just about the whole season, signed plenty of autographs, shared many laughs and saw a new generation of hockey players.

"I actually came to one of the first sessions," Primeau said. "At the time, it was a little dangerous. Almost all of them couldn't skate and they were falling all over the place . . . you were trying to make sure they were staying safe and at the same time making sure you didn't catch a blade or something.

"Now they've shown a lot of improvement. They're out there skating around, and they're doing great," he said.

Chairman Snider wasn't surprised.

"When you teach children at an early age, they pick things up, they're very quick learners," Snider said. "This has been a huge success, especially because it's only in its first year.

"We're all having a great time with this, and we hope to continue doing this," he said. "The response has been great, and they're really enjoying themselves."

Lorraine Valentine, an Oxford Circle resident and seventh-grade teacher at Grover Washington, agreed.

"They can't wait to get out there, and they have improved in the classroom since this started . . . it's been great," she said. "And we have a good time bringing them (to the rink) because it means so much to them. I think this has been a great thing, and we owe it all to Mr. Snider." **