Ice junket challenge: Clay Van Diest chases hockey dream

HELENA – At the young age of 16, Clay Van Diest was separated from his parents and his family.

He was separated because of a game that had brought them together in the first place, a game they grew up playing in their backyard in Laramie, Wyo., a game that took him to the Czech Republic and countless other places, a game that, ultimately, left him to fend for himself some 600 miles north of where he grew up, in another country and a small town called Wilcox, Saskatchewan.

"A way of life"

Clay started the game of hockey when he, like his older brother Shane, was a toddler and still in diapers in Laramie, Wyo., a town about an hour west of the state's capital, Cheyenne.

By the time he was 3 years old, Clay was rocking back and forth around the house in hockey skates, trying his best to stay upright, the skate guards underneath the sharp blades protecting any potential marks on the floor. The routine would strengthen his ankles, said his father, and it would surely help with his balance.

It was in the mid-1990s and Clay's father, Mike, a driven, no-nonsense and business-like man, was in the midst of an incredible coaching career as an assistant football coach at Wyoming, his alma mater.

Mike's wife, Heidi, was an accomplished downhill skier through high school and continued her passion at University of Montana, where she was an instructor at a local ski lodge. Hockey, though, as Mike recalls, was just a way of life.

"And I think we shattered her dreams of the boys being ski racers," he laughed. "They loved hockey. It was an outdoor sport. It was a great family sport."

The logistics to starting their own rink in their backyard were problematic at best. It sounded so easy, Heidi said, looking back on it. The ground was incredibly unlevel, for one. They would call in a truck full of dirt to make amends.

So Heidi, on her hands and knees and a two-by-four in her hand, spent about a month doing just that. When it was relatively smooth and the ice had frozen, Clay and Shane would spend countless hours on the weekends and after school cutting up the ice only for Heidi, when the kids were tucked in at night and Mike was away on recruiting visits, to head back outside, the spotlights shining, grab the hose that was hooked to the hot water heater and lay a fresh sheet of ice down. Bless her heart, Mike says.

"She was kind of our personal Zamboni," Clay remembers. " … With the amount of time that we spent on it, we needed a full-time Zamboni out there."

Clay learned how to skate from his brother Shane, a big-time skater, his father says. Although Clay would turn out to be the better hockey player, Shane was no slouch either.

"That's where it all got started," Clay said of his backyard. " … I remember skating around with (Shane) and every once in a while, he and his friends would dress me up as a goalie, and I think that toughened me up a little bit as a kid getting some of those pucks and balls shot at me. But that's definitely where the love for hockey started."

"It was really tough"

When Clay was entering his junior year in high school, he had to make what would be one of the biggest decisions of his life: to stay or go.

He'd been a quarterback at Helena High, but decided his future was on the ice. In fact, he always felt that way.

When he was 5 years old, Clay and his family moved to Helena, Montana, where Mike, an East Helena native who used to skate on the pond out on Pacific Street and buy wooden sticks for $5 and pucks for 25 cents, took the head coaching position at Carroll College.

Clay, a defensemen, played travel hockey on a team called the Renegades and then the Thunderblades, a team that won the U-16 National Championship in Philadelphia in 2010.

He practiced with the Junior A Tier III Helena Bighorns but decided to stay with the Thunderblades. But something was missing. He knew he wanted to pursue a collegiate hockey career -- this is not a National Hockey League dream he's chasing, his father says -- but was this, Helena, the best place to do that?

"He came to me that winter and he said dad, 'Do you ever think you'll ever coach in North Dakota or Minnesota?" Mike said. "And I said, 'Well, I don't know, I kinda like it here in Helena.' And then he says, 'Well, I guess I'm going to have to move."

The Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, a boarding school, is a comprised of a few hundred students. It is bigger than the town, Wilcox, Saskatchewan, where it resides and has nine hockey teams. It is regarded as one of the top developmental hockey programs, with 19 alumni currently in the NHL, including the likes of the Philadelphia Flyers' Vincent Lecavalier and the Chicago Blackhawks' Brad Richards.

It wasn't just the hockey that attracted Clay to Notre Dame. He could continue playing football there, and he could also play baseball and lacrosse.

"It was really tough," Clay said. " … It was kind of strange, I went on the visit with my dad to the school in Saskatchewan (Notre Dame) and it kind of fit. It kind of felt like that was the place that I needed to be."

Clay felt like Notre Dame is where he needed to be, but Heidi wasn't so sure. After all, he was just 16 at the time, well before this country's accepted timeline of sending their kids on their own journey. What kind of parent sends their child off at 16 and doesn't finish raising them, she asked?

The drive and the aftermath

Mike and Heidi didn't do much talking. The latter did a bunch of crying. It was 2010, and the Van Deists were on their way to leaving their child in another country.

On the way, they stopped in Havre for a recruiting trip. Mike watched now-quarterback Mac Roche play his first game of his senior season for Whitefish. Heidi was so upset and in a daze that she doesn't remember anything about that game.

They dropped Clay off in Saskatchewan and drove back to Helena. Heidi still crying. Her and Mike certainly not talking. They stopped in Miles City on the way back and they ate some Subway. Heidi's mom called.

"What's the matter?"

"I...just…don't…think…that I can do this," Heidi said, bawling.

"And she said, 'well, it's not about you, it's about Clay and you need to snap out of it.' I so needed to hear that."

The decision was hard on everyone, but it was Clay's decision – hockey had too big of a piece of his heart and he had to end up leaving, he said – and like a tape-to-tape pass on the ice, it was a perfect connection.

"I joke with her all the time, I say, 'When I'm a parent, there's no way I'm letting my kid move away when they're 16,'" Clay said. "I know it must have been tough on her. But it was kind of ironic, though, when she dropped me off, she was the one crying and when she picked me up (after the first year), I was the one crying. I had such a great year there."

It made him a better person, he said, in all aspects of life and he made lasting friendships. He will have friends he met there at his wedding one day.

"We just saw how happy he was," Mike said. "We saw the type of people that we had entrusted our son with, and we go, 'He's happy. This is a great place.' Very spiritual place. Glad it was a Catholic school because we were Catholics, but it was just awesome."

Still, Clay, a Chicago Blackhawks and Jonathan Toews fan, was in enemy territory. He took some heat with how the Olympics turned out this year. He was fined one year for his patriotism. More of a funny jab than anything, Clay says. The biggest adjustment was on the television screen, though.

He loves college football, in particular College GameDay and analyst Kirk Herbstreit, who he jokingly – but seriously – calls his hero. The Sports Network, or TSN, is Canada's version of ESPN. The problem? All it ever shows is the Toronto Raptors, Toronto Blue Jays and hockey. No college football or Heisman talk.

In his first season, Clay didn't know who won the Heisman. He got the word from Shane, a former Carroll College linebacker and assistant coach for two years at the University of South Dakota, several days later. At Notre Dame, he had Heidi tape the show so that he could come back during the holidays and get his fix.

"I would watch about seven straight hours of College GameDay," Clay said.

A solid player with a good balance between a stay-at-home defensemen and an offensive-minded one, Clay played two years for the Hounds, a Midget AAA team, before moving on to the Portage Terriers, part of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League, for the 2012 season. Last season, the 6-foot-1, 185-pounder accumulated 33 points (nine goals, 24 assists) in 67 games. Clay is in his fifth year in Canada – he just got traded a few weeks ago to the Virden Oil Capitals – and he says it's been a blast, but pretty up and down, he added.

One of the main reasons Clay, 20, started this journey was to play college hockey. This season marks the end of his junior hockey eligibility. He has garnered interest from Division I programs and Division III schools alike (there is no Division II hockey).

Mike and Heidi cross the border and watch their son when they can. Two years ago, they took the family to Portage and had Thanksgiving there. For now, they have an online subscription to all of his games. They hook it up to the TV and watch their son play the game he loves.

"I haven't really decided where it's going to happen yet, but I know for sure I am going to be playing college hockey year, which is a pretty exciting thing to say," Clay said.

Tears dominated the decision to leave home at 16. When Clay finds himself in an ice rink next season in the United States, those tears will turn to smiles, hugs and celebration, similar to a breakaway goal or a top-shelf snipe.

"It ended up being even better than I could have imagined for him," Heidi said.