Jason Horcasitas From Player to Coach

Most of us know Jason as the leader of our Midget team....a cool guy, fun to be around, and of course then there are the suicides!!!

That right suicides - ice suicides that is. Jason, a former BRYIH player himself, has been coaching our Midget team for 6 years (6 years really???) I recently asked Jason a few questions, about himself, his hockey, and life after BRYIH. Check out what he had to say.

Currently I am working in sales for a company called AHDeveney. We are a manufacturer's representative firm that with our home office in Baton Rouge. I am also coaching the midgets for BRYIH.

Coaching allows me to give back to a league and sport that did a lot for me. The impact that hockey has had on my life in immeasurable. The friendships made, the competition the sport provides. Hockey is one of if not the fastest sports where you constantly have to adapt to be succesful. This challange and being able to teach others how to deal with this challenge is what makes me come back to coach every year. Not to mention that the midget team is like a family, every year we lose some of our members to age and it is sad to see them go but they always want to come back and help out. It is a true family environment.

At the end of the day I know that I have made an impact on someone's life, the same way that my coaches made an impact on me. My first hockey coach, Coach Mike in Lafayette, always told us to play for the love of the game and nothing more, not for anyone or anything. It is something that I try to teach to my players, and when you are allowed to coach a sport that you love and are passionate about, it is very gratifying. To see the look on a players face when they score a crucial goal, or the smiles in the locker room after a win, there is nothing like it. It is also amazing to see how hockey changes a players life. I have seen troubled teens come into this program and when they leave it, their lives have straightened out.

It is hard to pick a single memory. As a player, my best hockey memory is a trip during my last season to a tournament in Little Rock. We traveled there with a small bench but we had a blast and won a few games. We had so few players that when one of our forwards went down, our back up goalie had to dress out and play up. As a coach, it would have to be our trip to Dallas a few years back. This was a tournament where the caliber of the opposing teams was a lot better than our team. Our players never once let that bother them, I think we may have only scored a couple of goals that whole weekend but our team never got down and never gave up. They skated hard every minute and they had the time of their lives as well. It was a tournament that when I see a player that was on that team, they still talk about it.

My worst hockey memory comes from my playing days. We all packed up a bus and left Baton Rouge at 2 AM to go play a couple of games in Pensacola. We were a better team then they were but we just did not show up to play that day. We lost both games pretty badly and then had to turn around and bus home. Longest bus ride of my life.

What hockey has done for my life is amazing. It brought me closer to my father, through hockey I have met friends that I will never lose contact with. I was weary about playing when I first learned about a league, I mean hockey in south Louisiana is a foreign concept. Once you understand the game, you understand that no sport comes close to giving you what hockey gives. It is a sport that will help you to improve at other sports. My batting average for baseball doubled after two years of playing hockey. The hand eye coordination vastly improved. I just hope that people come out and give this sport a shot, if they do, they will not regret it.