Playing the game

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, Feb, 1998 by Elizabeth Razzi

For the elite high school players on the Philadelphia Junior Flyers ice-hockey team, making the 390-mile drive to Exeter, N.H., to play Phillips Exeter Academy is a golden opportunity. Not only is Phillips Exeter one of the nation's premier prep schools, but it's also a training ground for top college hockey teams, an arena where kids who live outside the Minnesota-to-Maine hockey belt get a chance to show their stuff to college coaches and scouts.

For Flyers team captain Peter Menan, an 18-year-old high school senior from West Chester Pa., the stakes are particularly high. A college scout will be sitting next to Peter's dad, Noel, through most of the game. Noel chauffeured his son to New Hampshire on this snowy Saturday afternoon, while Peter's mother, Laurie, is back home ferrying their younger son, Andrew, 15, to his local hockey game. Andrew is in his third year with the West Chester Quakers, a travel team, and will probably try out for the Junior Flyers next year.

Neither Noel Menan, who works in his family's industrial-equipment business, nor Laurie, who works part-time at an ice rink, skates. Peter started at age 7, when he and a friend went to skating camp one summer. Since then hockey has come to dominate their lives.

In addition to the two travel teams, both boys play on their high school hockey team (Peter's the captain). For both boys, a typical week includes seven or eight practices and six or seven weekend games at rinks from Virginia to Maine. And hockey takes no holidays. Labor Day and Columbus Day weekends, Thanksgiving and the Christmas -- New Year's vacation are all consumed by tournaments, usually out of town. If the Flyers do as well as they did last year, they'll head to Chicago for the national championship in April. In 1997 they finished third in the nation among teams in USA Hockey's 17-and-under division.

As the boys' interest has spiraled, so have the family's expenses. The Menans hesitate to add them up too precisely, but they estimate that it costs at least $10,000 for one child to play a year of travel hockey.

That includes about $800 for skates, sticks, helmets and pads (a goalie's equipment can cost twice as much). But the last thing you want to skimp on is the equipment, says Laurie. "You get to a certain level and the hits start getting harder," she says. "I want my kids to have on as much equipment as possible, head to toe." She's grateful the boys aren't outgrowing $250 pairs of skates as often as they used to. One pair now lasts a whole season before wearing out.

Then there are team dues -- $915 for the Quakers, $650 each for the high school team. Outside the hockey belt, ice hockey usually isn't a school-sponsored sport. Instead, it's a "club" sport, which means that parents have to pay all expenses, including renting ice time, hiring buses for games, and buying uniforms and gear. The Junior Flyers have an agreement with the National Hockey League's Philadelphia Flyers that allows them to wear the professional team's uniform and use its logo, but provides no financial support. Joining the team costs each player $1,800 a year, plus equipment and travel expenses.

It's less than five minutes into the first period, and the Flyers'nerves are showing. The last time these two teams met, the Flyers were embarrassed, 11-1, and Phillips Exeter has already scored twice. They'll score again before the end of the period. In the locker room between periods, team captain Peter Menan sits by himself as coach Bud Dombrowski delivers a lecture on sloppy play by players who are trying to show off for scouts. Both Peter and the goalie, Joel Kulina, another high school senior who is being scouted today, are off their game as a result of the pressure.

You'd think there must be a financial payoff for the efforts of families like the Menans -- if not the Olympics, then surely a college scholarship. But you'd be wrong. Peter's chances of getting a hockey scholarship are thinner than pond ice in April. Even making a good college team isn't a given.

The surest route to a prime hockey school in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I is to play for a prep school, such as Phillips Exeter, where tuition, room and board run nearly $22,000 a year and the facilities are the envy of many a small college. Some high school graduates even do an extra year at prep schools to polish their academics and hone their hockey skills, and make the cut for a Division I team. (Boys ages 10 to 17 can attend a two-week summer ice-hockey camp at Phillips Exeter, with its two full-size indoor rinks, for $1,150; one-week sessions for girls and boys cost $650. Call 603-772-4311 for a brochure.)

Even athletes who do get a scholarship don't usually get a full ride. Of the 52 colleges and universities that have Division I hockey teams, six don't grant athletic scholarships because they belong to the Ivy League. NCAA rules allow each Division I school to award no more than the equivalent of 18 full hockey scholarships per year, divided among no more than 30 athletes. In 1996, the average school actually awarded 15 scholarships divided among 21 athletes, according to an NCAA survey. And players from American prep schools and junior-league teams aren't alone in coveting those slots; nearly half of ice-hockey recruits at American colleges come from Canada and other foreign countries.