Young hockey players still dream of Olympic glory

Even so, it seems, for the young men who take to the ice regularly as members of the Sioux City Musketeers hockey team. We talked to a few players, and some agreed that their odds of Olympic glory are about as likely as Happy Gilmore’s. But for a couple of the Musketeers, who had Olympian parents, the idea is not so far-fetched.

“Obviously, it’s a big thing to be on the Canadian Olympic team,” said Tyler Mueller, a 19-year-old defenseman from Regina, Saskatchewan. “But realistically, you’ve got to be pretty darned good. The 24-25 guys on that team are high-end NHL players. So the thought of it is obviously unbelievable. It looks like it would be fun, but I never really thought about it.” Even Tyler admitted that if the opportunity presented itself, he would go for the gold.

“I’ve seen it, growing up, watching all the best players in the world, and it would be something really exciting to do,” added Adam Johnson, a 19-year-old forward from Hibbing, Minn., who admits that he never gave much thought to trying out. But if the opportunity presented itself, he'd take it.

For Bobby Nardella, a 17-year-old Musketeer defenseman from Melrose Park, Ill., whose dad, Bob Nardella, played hockey for Italy in the 2006 Torino Olympics, the dream still lives.

“I’ve always dreamed about playing in the Olympics. Representing my country would be a really cool thing to do, and if the chance ever came, I would for sure take it up,” he said.

The high schooler said coming to Sioux City from the Chicago area to play for the Musketeers was a big step. “It’s all about development, and coming to this league is all about getting better and moving on,” he said.

Nardella always watches the international games.

“It’s really fun to watch different countries playing against each other. The USA-Canada is always a big, big game, like the Crosby slam into overtime (Sidney Crosby’s game winner for Team Canada against Team USA in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Calgary). It was really cool to see that and talk about it a lot,” he said

Nardella went to Torino with his mom and brother to see dad play for Team Italy. An American with dual citizenship after playing hockey for Italy for a couple of years, Dad played for the host country, so the excitement that generated from the fans (“it was so cool. All the fans were going crazy”) proved inspiring to his son, even though Team Italy, at 0-2-2, didn’t do that well. Dad went on to play 14 years for the AHL’s Chicago Wolves. So it’s not hard to see where Nardella’s hockey genes came from.

The same kind of genes have convinced Stuart Pomeroy, 18, a defenseman from Glenview, Ill., that he may indeed have a good shot at the Olympics.

“I think that obviously being a pro hockey player is something that every little kid aspires to, and the Olympics is just the culmination of the entire professional world,” Pomeroy said. “Coming together to compete in a setting that represents more than sports itself, that’s what the Olympics are all about.”

Pomeroy, like Nardella, found his inspiration at home – from his mother. Carol Brown, was a three-time Olympian and bronze medal winner in the women’s eight rowing. She was on the 1976, 1980 and 1984 teams at Montreal, Moscow (boycotted by the USA) and Los Angeles. The bronze came in Montreal. She was one of the first alternates in L.A.

“That was quite a bit before my time, but having her,” he said, “she inspired me basically my entire life with stories of her Olympic successes and failures. She was just an inspiration. Having all the big banners and the Olympic memorabilia and her medal around the house is really something special. And after she retired from rowing in 1984, she went on to serve various positions for the USOC (U.S. Olympic Committee) as well.”

Pomeroy tried rowing at the prep school he attended his last two years of high school and loved it, and though the rowing bug is “running in my veins,” the hockey bug bit first and, it turns out, both parents played hockey at Princeton University, the school he will be attending next fall. He plans to play hockey and maybe do a little rowing on the side.

Should it happen, the Olympics would be the pinnacle of his hockey experience, and he believes getting to the pro level is realistic in his hockey future. “And if the Olympic experience is one that presents itself, then I would be ecstatic,” he said.

The whole family enjoys watching hockey, particularly during the Olympics. And with an American mom and Canadian dad, Stuart enjoys dual citizenship, though he has never lived in Canada.

“When Canada’s playing the U.S., my mom and dad sit on different sides of the room, and I kind of sit in the middle. But probably, I’ll root for the U.S. team,” he confessed.

He is especially interested in the 2014 Olympics. A training colleague who is a track and field athlete is one of the top prospects in the U.S. bobsled team, he said, and he knows quite a few people within the Olympic ranks that are going to be competing.

He went to the Salt Lake City Olympics as a young boy back in 2002 and caught a couple events, the bobsled, ski jump and a couple hockey games.

“It was just the atmosphere that was really, really, positively overwhelming,” he said. “The Olympic games as an entity represents much more than sport itself. It is the coming together of basically the entire world on a single stage in peaceful competition. Everyone gets along during the Olympics, with a few exceptions in history.”