ST. LOUIS — Next weekend will be one of the coolest weekends ever in St. Louis sports … and it’ll have nothing to do with the Cardinals’ season-opening series or the City SC home game.
A unique event is coming to town — an event to make St. Louisans proud. It’s the Disabled Hockey Festival, which celebrates athletes from across the country (and Canada and the United Kingdom) who will come here to compete.
“For the first timers who have never actually seen it before, I know that they will fall in love with it,” said St. Louisan Steve Cash, who lost his right leg at age 3 and became America’s greatest sled hockey goalie with three Paralympic gold medals.
More than 130 teams of athletes will participate in six disciplines that are recognized and supported by USA Hockey: sled hockey, special hockey, warrior hockey, blind hockey, deaf/hard of hearing hockey and standing amputee hockey. The names of the sports alone are jaw-dropping — the perseverance needed to simply play the games is astounding.
Every disabled athlete is a story. Every athlete has overcome daunting physical and emotional challenges — many from a young age — and every athlete embodies the strength and will of the body and mind. It’s eye-welling stuff.
And it’s free to attend. All the events except warrior and sled hockey will take place from the night of March 30 through April 2 at the Centene Community Ice Center in Maryland Heights, where the Blues practice. The warrior games will take place at both Centene and Maryville University Hockey Center next weekend, while the sled competition will be at both rink locations from April 13-16.
Josh Pauls, who went to Lindenwood and won four gold medals at the Paralympics, will be on the ice for games during the festival.
“We get to host an event of this size that celebrates disabled hockey on this scale,” said Lloyd Ney, the local organizing chair. “The group of us that is volunteering to run this, that’s the thing that we’re most excited about. We get to host this celebration. And because everyone that’s involved in hockey, really, truly believes that hockey is for everyone. And St. Louis gets to showcase it.”
The special hockey players are athletes with cognitive and/or developmental disabilities. Warrior hockey features players who have served our country and are injured and disabled U.S. Military Veterans. Standing amputee hockey showcases athletes with congenital or acquired amputations. And in blind hockey, they use a larger metal puck with beeping noises. The players communicate by tapping their sticks, and the goalies shout to alert the location of the net.
And sled hockey, well, it’s particularly thrilling. Perhaps you’ve seen it played on television or in video clips. It’s powerful to watch the players’ power. They sit their bodies upon sleds — each sled has two blades — and almost like cross-country skiers, the athletes use a metal stick in each hand to propel themselves up and down and around the ice. On the other end of each stick is a hockey-stick blade to control the puck.
And the goalies such as Cash are also on sleds, which have metal picks on the backside that aid movement.
“It’s certainly a privilege,” Cash said, “to be able to do something like that and to be involved in an organization that really believes in helping individuals feel better about themselves and gain confidence. … To be on the ice and to compete and train and do all these sorts of things to make myself a better athlete, I think it also ends up just making you a better person.”
Cash went to Ritenour High School and now lives in Hazelwood. Famously, he made the United States Paralympic team while 16 (earning bronze in 2006). And in the three ensuing Paralympics, he won gold in Vancouver, Sochi and PyeongChang (the Paralympics take place the week after the Summer or Winter Olympics in the same city and site). In Vancouver in 2010, he did not allow a goal. Five games, no goals for a gold. He retired in 2021 from international play — he finished with 103 wins, 33 losses, 16 overtime wins and seven overtime losses.
At the Disabled Hockey Festival, he plays goal for the DASA CarShield team (Disabled Athletes Sports Association).
“I’m just hoping that we can put some good games together and just help the sport evolve — especially in the St. Louis community,” said Cash, who lost his leg at 3 due to bone cancer. “We’re definitely going to get family and friends out and involved — they’re going to be cheering us on. We’re hoping to get folks from all over that have never seen this sport before — that would be fantastic. …
“We always look forward to meeting new faces and getting new people involved. And so that’s the goal of the future of this — to grow it and to get it to a point where there’s a ubiquitous movement where everybody buys in and has a shared belief that the sport can succeed, no matter what. … So it’s always nice to see everybody get together and just be a part of something bigger.”
