FEG Insight Bridge Podcast with Frank Yantek of The Cincinnati IceBreakers

Chapters

00:00:00 Intro

00:00:35 Episode overview

00:01:08 How the Cincinnati IceBreakers came about

00:03:01 What is sled hockey?

00:04:50 The social and emotional value of playing sports

00:06:18 Rising stars

00:09:36 How donations are used and why they’re so important

 

Greg Dowling (00:05):
Welcome to the FEG Insight Bridge. This is Greg Dowling, head of research and CIO at FEG, an institutional investment consultant and OCIO firm serving nonprofits across the U.S. This show spans global markets and institutional investments through conversations with some of the world's leading investment, economic, and philanthropic minds to provide insights on how institutional investors can survive and even thrive in the world of markets and finance.

Greg Dowling (00:35):
As a special bonus feature this month, we wanted to highlight the Cincinnati IceBreakers, a charity that we support with our upcoming FEG Hockey Classic. Hear a firsthand account of the powerful impact that it's had on not only the players, but the parents. No matter what the score, these are true winners.

Greg Dowling (00:54):
Frank, welcome to the FEG Insight Bridge. Would you maybe introduce yourself and the organization you represent?

Frank Yantek (00:59):
My name is Frank Yantek, and I'm involved with the Cincinnati IceBreakers. It's an adaptive sled hockey program based here in Cincinnati.

Greg Dowling (01:08):
Why are organizations like the Cincinnati Icebreakers important?

Frank Yantek (01:12):
In the disabled community, you have two sides to it. One is--everyone knows Special Olympics, and it's a great organization, but that is more intellectual disabilities. There is a lot of money and funding for those groups that are out there. However, on the other side of it, where you have people with physical disabilities, it is a lot of smaller groups that are usually city-based as opposed to being a national organization. So we got involved with the sled hockey side of it. Our family was always a hockey family, and my youngest son was born with spina bifida, and he always wanted to play hockey. We got involved with a local roller hockey program that they started in our community and asked if he could play, and he ended up becoming a goalie in a power wheelchair--he was the only disabled person--and did that for about seven or eight years.

Greg Dowling (01:59):
Wow.

Frank Yantek (01:59):
He wanted to be involved. He got involved. And from there, he was doing some physical therapy and... There was a woman by the name of Renee Loftspring, she is a physical therapist, she taught at one of the local colleges. Her son played hockey and she was dealing with these individuals with physical disabilities. She convinced her son's high school hockey coach to try to get involved in this. His name is Rob Wocks. He is from Canada; he is serious hockey all the time and he has been the coach from the very beginning. They started a program where they brought some individuals down from Columbus who already had a team set up and a non-profit organization all set up. They came down, we got my son on the ice, and he was hooked. There were three or four of them. My wife and I got involved from the very beginning, and from that time until today, one or both of us has always been involved on the board of directors of the organization. This past year, we finally got to the point where we were large enough where we became our own non-profit organization. So we split off from Ohio Sled Hockey and are now the Cincinnati IceBreakers.

Greg Dowling (03:01):
For those who haven't seen this before, maybe take a step back and describe what it's like. How does sled hockey work?

Frank Yantek (03:08):
First of all, it is hockey. Everything is exactly the same. There's one rule that's different, where you can't hit somebody with the front of your sled into their side, it's called T-boning. Every other rule is exactly the same as hockey. At the upper levels, it is full contact hockey. At the lower levels, some people just come out for physical activity at our practices to do that. If you think about a bucket seat, you have two blades underneath it and there is a frame that goes out for your feet--almost like if you think about a trombone slide. There's a sling on it, your feet are straight out in front of you, and what's happening is you're strapped in and it's adjustable to the limb. Then you have two sticks that are about a foot and a half long. The top of it is shaped like a hockey blade and the bottom of it has two metal picks that dig into the ice. You propel yourself with your arms and then also can use both of the sticks to shoot and pass the puck.

Greg Dowling (03:59):
I've done this before. It is really hard. And the people that have been doing this for a while, they fly.

Frank Yantek (04:04):
In all honesty--I play standup hockey now...

Greg Dowling (04:07):
I've seen you play hockey. I don't know if I'd call it real hockey, but that's okay.

Frank Yantek (04:12):
Fair enough. But what happens is, some of these players are now so fast it is literally difficult to keep up with them. We have two players that are now two of the fastest players in the world.

Greg Dowling (04:21):
Wow.

Frank Yantek (04:22):
It's crazy. What ends up happening is... We started off with a small group. Some of them just come out on Monday nights for practice and to get physical activity. We have an adult team now that travels. And then we have two players who are in the upper echelons of USA Paralympic hockey.

Greg Dowling (04:38):
Wow. I've seen them play and they're flying around. I just think that's got to be so amazing if you have a disability. You're on the ice, you're flying around, you're hitting people, you probably forget that you have any issues. There's that competitive nature that's probably great, but being on a team and traveling, maybe talk about how important that is for some of these individuals.

Frank Yantek (04:57):
The social aspects of this are more important than the physical aspects, in my opinion. You have individuals who were born with disabilities, and it's actually easier for them to deal with this because they've dealt with it their entire life. They wanted to do things; they just didn't know there was an opportunity for them to be able to participate in these kinds of sports. And they're really isolated in their lives. A lot of things happen where--just some instances with my son, there were birthday parties that he wasn't invited to because their homes weren't handicap accessible and they didn't want to be embarrassed, and things of that nature. So part of this is it allows those individuals to be with other individuals in the social settings and allows them to be themselves. They make friends, they learn leadership. The individuals who have had spinal cord injuries--we have people, ex-military who have had double amputees and things like that.

Frank Yantek (05:49):
It's much more difficult for those individuals, because they were used to being studs in life, played sports and the whole bit, and now their whole life has changed. It's kind of like this, "Oh, woe is me. How am I going to live my life, the rest of it?" We get them on the ice one time, and usually that's it. Then when they see that it is full contact and they can do the things they did before, you see smiles on their face. No matter how bad my day is, on Monday nights you go to practice, and you see these people out there smiling and it just makes everything better.

Greg Dowling (06:18):
You mentioned earlier that there's been some success--at least on a local level--with some individuals. Maybe you can kind of share a little bit more about that.

Frank Yantek (06:24):
The individuals that we have... The obvious ones and the ones that people see all the time, we have an individual, his name's Ben Musselman. He was born in China with spina bifida, was abandoned, and family he had locally adopted him. We got him on the ice, and from day one he has just been incredible. He was on at like 12 years old. At 15 or 16, he made the U.S. National Developmental Team had some medical issues and then COVID hit, and he wasn't on the ice. Unfortunately, he did not make the national team for the last Paralympics, which were in China. But this past summer he made it to the national team. He went over to the Czech Republic and played over there and is now one of the best players in the entire world. The other side of it, on the female side, we have the cutest hockey player in the entire world--

Greg Dowling (07:09):
She is cute.

Frank Yantek (07:10):
--Jamie Benassi. She's four feet tall and she is one of the most competitive people I've ever met in my entire life. On the ice the first time, she had the perfect stroke on the sleds, we had to do no adjustments for her. She started working out. For Christmas she made her parents get her hockey movies, videos, and season tickets to the Cincinnati Cyclones team so she would understand the game. This past, year she made the women's national team. So we now have one of the best women players in the world and one of the best men players in the world from our program that started 15 years ago. Those are the ones that are the obvious. The ones that you don't see are individuals where--we had a woman who was in her late 20s, early 30s, had a spinal cord injury, was an incredible track athlete, almost world-class track athlete.

Frank Yantek (07:56):
She went into a wheelchair, and we finally got her to come out onto the ice and took her to a tournament up in Columbus. She just looked at all the people and she said... This was in the evening, and we had a pizza party afterwards. She was like, "Thanks, all of you." She said, "I felt so bad for myself." She said, "I come up here and I see these little kids taking their legs off, some of them only have one arm, and these people were out there playing hockey and they just gave me a whole different perspective on life to be able to go back into life." My best story is we had a woman who came out and brought her brother who was in an automobile accident, and she said, "Please, please, please don't post anything about this on Facebook or anywhere else. My parents do not know I brought my brother here." So he was in his mid-30s. We got him in the sled, and at the end of the day she came over in tears. She said, "This is the first time I've seen him smile in 2 years."

Greg Dowling (08:50):
Wow.

Frank Yantek (08:51):
To do that. So it's not only those athletes who are world class, but it's those giving people life again. And when we go to these tournaments in the adult teams, we sit around in a hotel lobby with pizza in the evening. People have their prosthetic legs off and arms off and are in wheelchairs, in braces, and everything else, laughing. Some adult beverages are involved and things like that. They’re up till 2:00 in the morning and they become real people again and are included back in society. Those are just some of the success stories that we've had.

Greg Dowling (09:20):
Yeah. Win or lose on the ice, that's a great success.

Frank Yantek (09:23):
Yeah, exactly.

Greg Dowling (09:24):
One of the reasons that we donate money to the IceBreakers is because if you're a family and you're dealing with someone that has a need, you're spending a lot of money to equip your van, your house. Then to say, "Hey, we're having a tournament in Detroit or Chicago," or whatever, and paying for it, that can be tough, right?

Frank Yantek (09:44):
Hockey is ridiculously expensive to begin with. In the beginning, we got a sled lending program through USA Hockey, and we had a youth program that was kind enough to donate old stinky youth hockey equipment. It was bad [laughs].

Greg Dowling (09:57):
[laughs] For those who haven't played hockey, hockey equipment smells really bad.

Frank Yantek (10:01):
It's unbelievable. But what happened is we had some individuals--ex-military things--and we had this little equipment, and so we struggled in that first part of it to get that. But the second year, we got a grant from the NHL Players Association for $10,000. A sled runs between $700 and $1,000. All the rest of the equipment, you're looking at $300, $400, $500, that's just to get it equipped. Ice time is... We started out an hour every week. Then we're up to 40 players and we needed more ice time and split it up, so we're up to an hour and a half. It's like $15,000 a year for us just for the ice time. If you host tournaments and things like that, there are additional costs involved with that whole process. And then for the people who are doing traveling--to do that, it is a whole other part of it.

Frank Yantek (10:44):
So we kind of worked into this and we did fundraisers. The volunteers have been incredible, the fundraisers--we started doing things with the Cincinnati Cyclones. We sold enough tickets--we got $5 for each ticket, and they would allow the players to be on the ice between periods, which gave us more exposure to find additional players, but also money. We had people who would come by and volunteer and just say, “Can I come on the ice with you?” We had one young man who played youth hockey, he stopped there and watched us and stood there watching and watching. About a month later, we got a call from his mother, who said that he is having his bar mitzvah and he requested all gifts be given to the Cincinnati IceBreakers.

Greg Dowling (11:23):
Wow.

Frank Yantek (11:24):
Two months later, we get this envelope with a stack of checks in it, and that has been incredibly helpful. If we need a sled for someone, you get a cute little girl saying, "We need to get a sled at $700," and we get the money right away. That's not been an issue. But to get money for the ice where people can't see the physical donations there, was more difficult. And the most difficult part of it was to get funds for travel, because as you talked... I have a son with spina bifida, had great insurance and the whole bit, but the funds beyond that are just--it's ridiculously expensive to be able to cover all those different things that they need above and beyond just their basic medical care. We have some of these people from the inner city who have very little resources, literally have never stayed in a hotel, don't have a credit card, and don't know how to make a reservation with these kinds of things.

Frank Yantek (12:12):
We have never, ever had a player who was not able to play or was not able to travel because of these funds, and that's part of the funds that you've helped us with. That's where they've gone, is to make sure that that happens. The first year is absolutely free for everyone, zero expense to get the people on the ice. After that, I think it's $175 a year, if you can afford it, for the basic thing. If not, we have scholarships for that, plus the scholarships for the travel, for the tournaments and things that we do. We're in a league now. We go everywhere from Grand Rapids--we're going to Knoxville on Saturday. We were in Fort Wayne last weekend. We go to Pittsburgh, Columbus, Chicago. It's been great.

Greg Dowling (12:49):
Yeah, that's awesome. Having watched it, one thing, if you're listening to this, you can kind of visualize it. Yeah, they're flying around and yeah, they're hitting each other. You can kind of picture that in your mind. I think the coolest thing is almost like in basketball when you're changing directions and you're protecting the ball, how you go through your legs, they're going really fast and they're going between the sled, I mean, they're going from one side to the other to protect it. It is the coolest thing. If you ever see it on TV or get a chance to watch it, it's fun.

Frank Yantek (13:15):
Yeah. It's all over YouTube. If you go into YouTube and search "sled hockey," you can see local teams and also you can see the U.S. national team playing in the Paralympics. U.S. has won the last three gold medals in the Paralympics. The different part of the game is there's two sticks instead of one, but the rest of it is exactly the same on there.

Greg Dowling (13:33):
It's hockey.

Frank Yantek (13:34):
Yeah, it's hockey.

Greg Dowling (13:34):
And it's a workout too. It's a huge workout on your arms. I mean, oh my gosh.

Frank Yantek (13:38):
We used to do--at the end of the season, we did players against the coaches and volunteers, and we can't even come close [laughs].

Greg Dowling (13:47):
[laughs] I can imagine. I can imagine. Well, we're going to support this again this year--our involvement with your organization--seeing all the great works that you do for all these families and players. If anybody's listening to this and they want to either get involved or contribute, what's the best way to do that?

Frank Yantek (14:03):
If you go to our website, it's www.cincinnatisledhockey.org, there is links to it. You can see some of these stories of the individuals. There's some videos that are on there and also the address of where you can help fund, if you'd like to send some money and help some additional players out there. We would appreciate that.

Greg Dowling (14:19):
That is great. Hey, Frank, thanks so much for coming on this podcast.

Frank Yantek (14:22):
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Greg Dowling (14:25):
If you are interested in more information on FEG, check out our website at www.feg.com, and don't forget to subscribe to our communications so you don't miss the next episode. Please keep in mind that this information is intended to be general education that needs to be framed within the unique risk and return objectives of each client; therefore, nobody should consider these to be FEG recommendations. This podcast was prepared by FEG. Neither the information nor any opinion expressed in this podcast constitutes an offer or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any securities. The views and opinions expressed by guest speakers are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of their firm or of FEG.