Baltimore native Noel Acton says ice hockey happens to most players by accident. For him, it came after he discovered hockey was eerily similar to his hobby of skating on frozen lakes as a child.
It was also somewhat an accident for the members of Acton’s Baltimore Banners, a youth hockey organization he created as part of the East Baltimore-based Tender Bridge program. He was giving a small number of children rides from their houses in East Baltimore to go watch a friend of Acton’s play hockey, the sport those children soon found to love.
Acton, this year’s winner of the NHL’s Willie O’Ree Community Hero Award, still leads the organization that has grown to impact hundreds of Baltimore youth since its creation. The goal, he says, is to give the players the family they don’t have at home.
“They’ve grown to become a family,” Acton said on Glenn Clark Radio June 16. “A lot of these kids are missing that family feeling at home.”
Soon, that small group of young athletes worked hockey into their year-round sports calendar along with football in the fall and baseball in the spring. As the number of players eventually grew, so did the program. Acton added more coaches and mentors to help with the growing pool of players.
Where Acton aims to differentiate his Baltimore Banners, who play games at Patterson Park in East Baltimore against other local clubs, from other teams the players might join is the ability to grow together. The age range is wide, with some players being as old as 20 and some more than a decade younger.
“Sticking with it year-round is important for the kids,” he said. “They connect with a coach, and then the season’s over and the coach is gone. They’ll connect with a teacher, and then next year they get a new teacher. We’ve been working with some of our kids … for 10, 12 years now.”
More than a decade after creating the program, Acton’s efforts garnered the attention of the NHL. The Willie O’Ree Award is given to a person who positively impacts their community. To further Acton’s reach, the league has also begun efforts to install similar organizations in every NHL city in the country.
“Noel gives back to his community in so many ways, on and off the ice,” O’Ree said in a statement after awarding Acton. “He embodies what this Award represents: generosity, selflessness, and altruism. He has built his organization from scratch and for two decades he has positively impacted hundreds of lives, for no reason other than wanting to build a stronger, healthier community.”
Acton’s players aren’t likely to pursue hockey further after their high school years. They do their best, but most are only able to play a couple of times per week, much fewer than how often the top youth in the area can. Still, it doesn’t dissuade some of them from trying.
One player, who graduated high school this year, was accepted to Morgan State. Acton and the teen’s fellow players were thrilled, but the graduate wasn’t.
“He didn’t want to go because they don’t have a hockey team,” Acton said.
Acton told him he needed to attend anyway. But it represents something greater. Youth who likely would have never heard of hockey if it weren’t for Acton are now playing it multiple times a week, all while creating family-like relationships with peers and coaches that otherwise would be absent from their lives.
Sometimes, it takes a bit more persuading to introduce the sport to prospective players.
“You want to play hockey?” Acton would ask children he found on the street. “They give you this dumb look, ‘What’s that?'”
So he took pictures of other children playing, returned to the confused ones and introduced them to the game. This summer, Acton started a street hockey program that brought players to local parks to play on basketball courts.
It started with a group of 12 players. The next week they met, they each brought friends to join. Then, more friends arrived. Soon, the group had more than 50 players.
“It just means everything in the world to them,” Acton said. “One of the things I’m doing … is a blueprint for other nonprofits to be able to do that with their inner-city kids.”
For more from Acton, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Abigail Matthews