It goes something like this. You play around 15 years at your physical peak suffering through bone-jarring hits and injuries while trying to amass a slew of goals and assists in the world’s fastest game. Five years after your career ends and providing you are deemed to be one of the top one-percent to ever don a sweater and put on skates, your phone rings and they tell you have been chosen to be inducted into the shrine of the sport, the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. On Induction Day, your sweater is presented to Phil Pritchard, Curator of The Hall, and from then on you and your sweater are forever memorialized. Besides winning the Stanley Cup, having your sweater in the Hall is the hope of every hockey player in the world.
In what can only be described as a dream come true, on Monday evening at this same hallowed shrine in Toronto, Captain Bill Messer will be presenting Curator Phil Pritchard with the Cayman Breakaway team sweater for display in The Hall. The Department of Tourism will be hosting a gala event that will gather NHL Alumni Hockey Hall of Fame Inductees along with invited guests from around the globe and together with travel and trade representatives and the media.
How did this happen? It started simply as four men recapturing their love for the world’s fastest game. Captain Bill Messer came up with the idea to have a team from the Cayman Islands participate in the 2005 World Pond Hockey Championships in Plaster Rock, New Brunswick after reading an article in the Wall Street Journal. ‘When I read about the tourney, it automatically took me back about 30 years ago and growing up in Canada,’ said Messer.
He rounded up long-time friends and former Canadians Marty Goschl, Norm Klein and Joe Stasiuk. All had played hockey throughout their youth and prior to moving to the Cayman Islands where they now reside and have become citizens. Although they hadn’t skated for eight years or more, the quartet began flying to Tampa on the weekends to train, compliments of Cayman Airways and their Department of Tourism.
At the 2005 Tournament, the Breakaway almost made it through to the playoff round of 32 teams, but fell one goal and one game short and finished with a record of 2-3. However, in the lead-up to the 2005 Tourney and throughout, the Breakaway made a lot of friends including the local townspeople, the international media, and pretty much everyone along the way. Breakaway member Joe Stasiuk noted, ‘I think Marty Goschl must have spent five minutes speaking with every person in Plaster Rock. In a town of 1,000 people, it’s no easy feat. I think Marty could easily have run for Mayor when he was finished!’
For whatever reason, the spotlight shone on the Breakaway continued well past the tournament and has snowballed into an ongoing feel-good media story that rivals the Jamaican bobsled team. In the current run-up to the 2006 tournament the team has again begun their weekend training and the Breakaway have again caught people’s attention. As a result of their popularity, the team came to the attention of the Hockey Hall of Fame. And then, like many of their hockey heroes, the four Breakaway members received a call that their sweater would be going into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Captain Bill Messer commented, ‘I’m 43 years old and have been playing since I was 5, so including the 8 years of vacation from the ice, that’s a career of 30 years. I know I’ve not scored as many goals or assists as Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux or Gordie Howe but like them my sweater will be in the Hockey Hall of Fame. It is the greatest honour in hockey I could ever imagine and we hope to continue to present ourselves on and off the ice in the manner that this honour presumes. We are grateful to everyone that has helped to make this possible and especially to our sponsors, the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism, Cayman Airways, SPEEDO, and Tortuga Rum Company.’
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