My Hockey Hero
Recently, my mother, Peggy Costello, was named USA Hockey's Volunteer of the Month after I nominated her as my Hockey Hero in their contest. After reading the very very brief write up on her that left out a few details, I felt that my essay did her much more justice than the 100 word side story that was featured in the magazine.
My name is Carly Costello, I’m 18 years old and live in the great state of Michigan and I’d like to tell you about my hockey hero.
My hockey hero doesn’t play hockey, but she does so much not only for me and my brother who plays hockey, but for the sport of hockey in general.
My hockey hero is my mom, Peggy Costello.
Johnny, my middle brother, began playing hockey nearly 7 years ago and my mother now proudly sported the title of “hockey mom”. My youngest brother Jacob also played hockey for a few years, but later decided it wasn’t for him. My mom began managing my brother’s team in his first year of Pee Wee hockey and was one of the people instrumental to the success in the beginnings of Adrian Youth Hockey Association.
In November of 2011, we were taking a trip to Perani’s to get my brothers both new skates. During the trip to Perani’s I, a month away from my 14th birthday, decided that I wanted to play hockey. She didn’t try to talk me out of it, or insist that I think about it a little longer before decided, she told the person waiting on us that we were going to go have to find gear for me before we left. And we did. I walked out of Perani’s that day with a bag full of gear and ready to hit the ice.
During the summer of 2012, we spent nearly every day at Arrington Ice Arena in Adrian and my mother talked to countless parents who brought their Pee Wee aged kids to sticks and pucks about signing up to play for our Pee Wee team that we were struggling to get enough kids for. By some miracle, my mother managed to recruit enough kids to play on our Pee Wee team.
Also in 2012, my mother began working with Hockey Ministries International, a Christian organization aimed at leading young hockey players to Jesus through chapels and camps held around the world. My mother took a week out of her summer to volunteer for camp from 7AM-11PM in the last week of July and has done so every summer since and is now the assistant camp director.
The 2012-13 season was probably the most tumultuous seasons I’ve ever been a part of. Our little Pee Wee team seemed to hit every road block we could and the new president of our association seemed hell bent on keeping us from succeeding. My mom was personally attacked week after week and email after email and in board meeting after board meeting by a man who had no reason to dislike her, all for trying to make sure our little team and association of less than 100 kids followed MAHA and USA Hockey rules. She could’ve quit her volunteer position as a team manager and board member quite easily and it all probably would’ve been over, I probably would’ve quit if I would have been her. But she didn’t. She handled the situation gracefully and never once lost her temper.
In the spring of 2013, we went to Ann Arbor so my brother could play spring hockey, something we didn’t have in Adrian. Johnny, my brother, loved it in Ann Arbor. That summer, my mom struggled with the decision to stay in Adrian and fight tooth and nail for our team and continue to be personally attacked on a monthly basis at board meetings or go to Ann Arbor where Johnny would have more opportunities to flourish and grow as a hockey player and I would have the opportunity to finally play on an organized team. With Johnny’s input of course, we chose to go to Ann Arbor in the fall season, a decision that was not easy because of our personal connection with the college hockey program at Adrian.
So that fall we began driving 55 miles one way to Ann Arbor so my brother could have the best opportunities available. My mom also volunteered for the job as director of house hockey that summer in Ann Arbor and dove in headfirst into her new volunteer position in Ann Arbor. Her job began early in August with evaluations and drafts and board meetings that took us to Ann Arbor three times a week at the least. We even traded in our full sized SUV that fall to a smaller SUV with better gas mileage because of the distances we were driving every week.
After that first season in Ann Arbor, I found myself in a predicament. I was turning 17 that next season and would now be considering U19 and there were not enough U19 girls in the Ann Arbor area to make a team and many parents didn’t want their daughters playing against 19 year olds who were practically adults so many girls simply quit after U16. But my mom didn’t want that to be my story. That season, she made it her mission to get the age classification changed in girls hockey from U19 to U18 like the boys are.
My mom has been to countless Michigan Amateur Hockey Association meetings and driven tens of thousands of miles all for her kids and sacrificed her summers so we could get ice time in the off season. She’s spent countless hours emailing with our MAHA girls rep and even the USA Hockey girls rep to see what she could do to make sure girls like me didn’t have to hang up their skates because of a strange rule that nobody had thought twice about.
Last February, my mom was named the Executive Director of Ann Arbor Hockey Association, the first paid position at AAAHA. Since then, she’s gone above and beyond her job description’s 20 hours a week of work and put in 50 hour week after 50 hour week of work sending emails, making phone calls, finding coaches, running evaluations, and attending AAAHA and MAHA board meetings. In 2015, she was nominated and awarded the AAAHA Thomas Gilson Award, an award given to an outstanding volunteer with AAAHA in order to acknowledge the their hard work.
Last summer, she started a travel team in the middle of June for my brother’s birth year in order to keep kids at AAAHA that would’ve otherwise left. She’s gotten so much flak for the things that she’s had to do to keep the team running and lost friends because of it, but she has remained resilient and handled ever difficult situation with grace. She deals with angry parents on a daily basis who will rail on her in email after email and yell at her over the phone, but she remains classy and graceful through it all because for her, it’s all about kids getting to play hockey. If I were put in her position I would have quit after the hard time that she gets on nearly a daily basis from parents who have no idea the hard work she’s putting in every single day.
Not only does my mother manage my little brother’s Midget A team, but she’s also the honorary team mom at Adrian College, where there are six hockey teams full of kids that she’d help in a heartbeat if they needed her, a home-cooked meal, or just want the company because they’re homesick and miss their moms.
This year would’ve been my final year of youth hockey, but I didn’t have anywhere to play, so I began shadowing my mom and am now an intern with AAAHA and help my mom out with her work and attend MAHA meetings with her every month. She’s done everything in her power to make sure that I can keep playing hockey and I will never be able to thank her enough for what she’s done for me.
My mom never played hockey, she’s only even skated once or twice and I don’t think she’s ever even worn hockey skates, but the things that she does for the game of hockey are huge and the impact she has had on both Adrian Youth Hockey Association in their early years and Ann Arbor Amateur Hockey Association in the three years she’s been here are incredible. In our time here with Ann Arbor, we’ve watched our girls program grow from only having teams at the U10-U14 levels to having teams at every age level next season. She may have been too late to help me and girls my age have somewhere to play their final year of hockey, but the things that she is doing with AAAHA and MAHA will help to make sure that no other little girl has to hang up her skates because of a lack of places to play. And for that, my mom, Peggy Costello, is and always will be my hockey hero.
