When you live in this Vancouver and play a sport that is ingrained in the culture of that British Columbia Vancouver, chasing your dream requires leaving your comfort zone, your neighborhood, your country.
But that doesn’t phase Gaiser Middle School eighth-grader Justin Loepker, or his parents, Andrea and Tim. In one recent year, the Loepker family put 28,000 miles on a new car crisscrossing the region to attend ice hockey tournaments and practices.
“We sure enjoy watching him,” Andrea says, shrugging off the regular trips to Kent for practices and the weekends attending tournaments.
Coaches for USA Hockey’s player development program also like what they’ve seen in the 14-year-old forward. After attending a pair of tryout camps, Justin is one of nine forwards from six Western states selected to participate in a national camp for players born in 1996. He will travel in July to Rochester, N.Y., for a week of scrimmages and training with 130 of the top players his age from across the country.
Appropriately, Justin learned of his selection for the national camp while riding with his mom to Spokane for a tournament. He is excited, a bit nervous, and honored to have this opportunity.
As with similar programs in other Olympic sports, the camp program is used to identify, evaluate and train top players who might become national team players. During his week in Rochester, Justin will be seen by professional scouts and coaches for junior teams, colleges.
It is the kind of exposure that can fast-forward a player’s career. Justin is not yet in high school, but he wants to play in the Western Hockey League. In fact, he wants to be drafted early in next May’s WHL Bantam Draft, the system by which teams such as the Portland Winterhawks select their future players.
His week in New York figures to impact Justin’s future. Justin has put a short lifetime into preparing for this opportunity.
Justin has a decade of hockey behind him, including seven seasons on teams that travel for competitive tournaments. The past two winters, Justin has played for Kent Valley Hockey Association Bantam Elite teams. This spring, and last, he accepted an invitation to play for a similar team based out of British Columbia during off-season tournaments, expanding his exposure to high-level hockey and the scouts who study it.
Justin was introduced to the ice before he turned 3. A neighbor in the Loepker’s Spokane cul-de-sac saw Justin racing around on in-line skates and suggested the kid try the ice. Justin remembers disliking the training bar that beginning skaters use for balance, quickly shedding that impediment to speed.
He’s been on a fast track since. Doing his best to emulate National Hockey League stars such as Sydney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, Justin has developed a knack for scoring goals.
“I use my speed and stick my nose in front of the net and work for garbage goals,” Justin says, explaining how he tallied about 60 goals with 30 assists for the Kent Valley team this past winter.
Before making hockey his focus, Justin also had success at baseball. As a left-handed hitter at Central Vancouver Little League, he played for the 2008 CVLL all-star team that advanced to the state tournament, the first time in decades a Central Vancouver Little League team reached the majors division state tournament.
After that tournament, Justin and his family decided it was time to focus solely on hockey.
When the Loepkers moved in the spring of 2006 to Vancouver from Spokane, Justin briefly played with the now gone Mountain View Mavericks program. He played a Pee Wee season with the Portland Junior Hawks before shifting to the Kent Valley teams.
In selecting a team, Tim Loepker said factors include coaching, the caliber of teammates, and the level of competition the team seeks.
That formula has meant traveling the Northwest and western Canada. Come July, all of those miles will be rewarded with the kind of trip that can truly expand Justin’s hockey horizon.
Paul Danzer covers Community sports for The Columbian. Reach him at 360-735-4521 or by e-mail at paul.danzer@columbian.com.
