Brooke Weatherup, who is a volunteer coach with the San Diego Chill, an ice hockey team for developmentally disabled children, has an interesting story:
–The Bishop’s junior, when she was younger, traveled to the desert in Arizona, of all places, to become interested in playing ice hockey after watching her cousin’s youth games.
–She and her sister hold citizenship in Canada, though their parents don’t, because both girls were born in Toronto while the family lived there.
–Weatherup bonded with a young girl she helped at surf camp, who fell in love with jumping over waves as they played together in the water, even though Brooke doesn’t know how to surf.
The ice hockey component is strong in her life. “I got her to root for my New York Rangers,” says her father Brock proudly. When the two visited San Diego for a weekend in advance of Brooke’s enrolling at Bishop’s, “We literally visited every hockey rink in the area to find a team I could play for,” she reports.
That was three years ago, and since then, playing right wing for the La Jolla Country Day School club team, she found the San Diego Chill and the opportunity to work with special needs children in her favorite sport.
“Freshman year, I was playing for Country Day on a Sunday morning,” she remembers. “The Chill was out practicing on the ice at UTC. I had to play a game right then, so I asked my dad to find out what the name of the organization was. There were teenagers coaching, and I wanted to get involved with something in the community and working with kids.”
As everyone who has tried ice skates knows, it’s a skill that has to be mastered. “We want everyone to be able to skate on their own, so that’s the first priority,” Weatherup says. “Then we work on how to fall and get up, as well as shooting/passing, because we want everyone to score some goals.”
Weatherup, academically, has “always really been into reading and writing,” she says. But she says she “really enjoyed” her class in Economics as a sophomore. “I plan to take my AP track for Econ next year (as a senior),” so her future study holds lots of options.
Ice hockey being a family thing, the Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist is a favorite. “My aunt and my dad liked him, so I adopted him, too,” the forward relates.
Even with the rain San Diegans have received this winter, Weatherup misses the seasons and the snow of Pennsylvania, where the family moved from to Southern California. “Although California is not the hardest place to live, with the coast and the beach,” she adds.
In her own competitive play in hockey, she says she tries to keep three things in mind: “Be aggressive, skate hard, have fun.” LJCDS, coached by Dan Wagner, competes with Pacific Ridge High, which has players who participate in the San Diego Chill program. Ryan Labrum heads the Chill.
