Ice Age Comes to Ventura County : Mariners Open Home Hockey Season Against Junior Ducks Tonight
Setting sail upon a frozen sea, the Ventura Mariners hockey team opens its home season tonight at the Easy Street Arena.
The team of teen-aged players, classified as “Junior B” and comparable to high school teams in U.S. hockey hotbeds in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, squares off against the Anaheim Junior Ducks at 9 p.m. in the Mariners’ first home contest of a 30-game season that runs until the end of February. The teams play again Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.
Ventura, 3-0 after a season-opening three-game sweep of the Arizona Bandits earlier this month, is a member of the six-team Western States Hockey League, a developmental circuit that allows top-notch 16-19-year-old players to skate against a higher level of competition without having to move east.
Owned and coached by Sean McGillivray, the Mariners are one of 29 Junior B teams in the United States and have players from Northridge, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and even Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
McGillivray has sunk more than $100,000 of his own money into the Mariners with about half earmarked for ice time. He also owns the Easy Street Arena and its twin ice surfaces, and has supervised a furious rush to get the building open in time for tonight’s game.
Like the Easy Street rinks, both the Mariners and the WSHL are new creations. The Mariners came into being in June, when McGillivray heard of WSHL President and Anaheim team owner Don Thorne’s efforts to form a league.
The six-team circuit includes Anaheim, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, San Jose and Phoenix. Each team, McGillivray said, is backed and financed by individuals willing to gamble, at least in part, on the entertainment value of teen-age hockey players.
“I’m gonna work like heck to break even,” said McGillivray, who is hoping for crowds of about 400 fans at $3-$5 a ticket to the team’s 15 home games.
“But even if I don’t, I think it’s a tremendous investment in the future. It’s badly needed in terms of players having a place to play. Before, there was no place for a skilled (16-19-year-old) player to go except back East or Canada.”
Not to say the Mariners won’t be visiting those places this season. In addition to its 30-game regular season, the team will travel to upstate New York in December for the Rochester Americans tournament, which will draw nearly 40 college scouts, McGillivray said. The team also likely will play in tournaments in Vancouver and New Jersey.
Throw in the fact that the Mariners often practice five times a week and that some also hold part-time jobs, and dedication becomes a must for surviving on and off the ice.
“These kids are very serious about hockey; it’s a big part of their lives,” said McGillivray, who often presides over 6 a.m. practices on the weekends.
“I don’t have to push them to practice or deal with excuses, and they want to go to tournaments and do off-ice training. It’s a big commitment and the road trips can be brutal, but they want to go to college and play hockey.”
And their parents back them up. Monique Weiss, mother of 17-year-old forward David Weiss, said hockey’s high cost in money and time is worth it if her son is happy.
“It’s important to me that he be busy and this is the one thing he wants to do,” she said. “I want him to be able to do it because he’s a good kid and he does well in school.”
Though the Mariners will rack up some impressive travel mileage by bus and plane, the players can at least continue to live and attend school in Southern California. Fourteen Mariners are still in high school, while the five other team members attend Moorpark College.
Three team members moved from Saskatoon to attend school and play for the Mariners. McGillivray said the Canadians are a welcome addition to his team, although they are not its stars.
“There’s not one dominant player; our scoring comes from all three lines,” McGillivray said. “We have a fast-skating team that has good puck skills. I think we can play with any junior team in the country . . . if we keep the game wide-open.”
There’s no slowing McGillivray’s hopes for the future. He sees a day when the fledgling WSHL blossoms and moves up a notch to become an established Junior A league scouted by college coaches. Many of the Mariners have their sights set on playing in college as early as next season.
“(NCAA hockey) is probably the ultimate goal for a majority of the guys on our team,” said Sean McGillivray Jr., who like many of his teammates has seen only a handful of Division I college games.
“We’ve always heard of guys like Brian Leech (New York Rangers) and Paul Kariya (Mighty Ducks) who made the NHL and also got their degrees. It’s great hockey in a scholastic atmosphere and it would be nice to go where everybody recognizes the sport and you can get financial aid for playing.”