By @StefanKubus –
ROYAL OAK – The kids weren’t the only students at Alfred E. Upton Elementary School in Royal Oak Tuesday afternoon.
Detroit Red Wings forward Justin Abdelkader and Danny DeKeyser visited the school to help introduce the NHL & NHLPA Future Goals Program, an unprecedented new education initiative that brings hockey to the classroom through interactive exercises and videos in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
The Wings teammates and Michigan natives – Abdelkader from Muskegon and DeKeyser from the Macomb area – worked with students in the school’s computer lab, running through the various exercises with them before taking to the gym floor for a students-against-teachers shootout showdown. In turn, the players themselves ended up learning about the newly-introduced program.
“I think it’s awesome,” DeKeyser said. “We came out here today and had a lot of fun with the kids and got to see some of the learning stuff on the computers that they’ve been doing and a nice little assembly in the gym. I think they had a lot of fun.”
Photos by Stefan Kubus/MiHockey
Both DeKeyser and Abdelkader certainly know the value of an education, as well, as both players chose the college hockey route, DeKeyser with Western Michigan and Abdelkader with Michigan State. But for Abdelkader, with teachers in his family and a recently-finished degree, it especially means a lot to him.
“Both my sister and my dad are educators and education is important for me,” Abdelkader said. “I just finished my college degree this past summer and education is something that no one can take away from you, and it’s important to present that message to these students how important it is, but at the same time, we’re people in the community that they can look up to and with a program like this, it can teach them some things that we use in our everyday work and how angles and different things, as far as the Future Goals program teaches students.”
When it came to the hockey-driven educational activities, Abdelkader said he wished the program existed when he was in school growing up.
“First of all, a strong education and the importance of educating the students, I think its nice that this Future Goals program teaches students who don’t know much about hockey or see it on TV and don’t know everything that goes into it, whether it’s a puck drop or the angles that maybe we use to pass pucks off the boards, the curves of the sticks and why we use them, so I think that’s obviously the most important part, but also spreading the knowledge of hockey,” Abdelkader said.
Olympia Entertainment President and CEO Tom Wilson said it’s programs like these that not only spice up the student experience, but also help promote the growth of hockey at the grassroots level.
“It always starts with kids, because once they’re fans, they’re fans forever, but you have to keep re-energizing your fan base, you have to keep bringing young people in,” Wilson said. “It makes everybody feel better, more excited about the game and more passionate about it, as well, so we feed off the young kids and it’s just great to see them embrace hockey like they are.”
One of the learning modules provided a geometric look at bank passes off the boards to help teach students about angles. DeKeyser said he put that information about angles from the classroom into action when he strapped on the goalie pads to stop Abdelkader on a breakaway in front of a gym full of students and faculty.
“I tried to,” DeKeyser said with a laugh. “I tried to take his angle away and stop the puck and it worked.”
For more information, visit futuregoals.nhl.com.