The spraying of the ice, in ice hockey, is similar to how people fall in love with the sound of a dribbling basketball, or the sound of a baseball hitting a bat. Senior Devante Dixon found his passion on the ice in hockey. Devante Dixon has been playing hockey since his 8th grade year. Dixon found his passion for the ice in a peculiar way.

“In eighth grade, in eighth period, I saw the movie ‘The Miracle’. There’s a part when the main team loses a game and the coach is mad. He has the team skating for four or five hours after the game and that sucked, but every time they would stomp the ground the snow would spray up and I thought that was the coolest thing, and I wanted to learn how to do that.” Although Dixon saw the film, he couldn’t jump right into hockey.

He had to learn how to skate first. “I learned to ice skate afterwards and that included me taking lessons with little kids and the love and the passion came from there.”

These lessons set Dixon up for success. The same year he started playing for a club team. During this time is when he realized that hockey is the sport for him and that he has a future in the sport.He began to creep up on his teammates that have been playing for their entire lives.

“My first year, I started late compared to everybody else because people usually start playing when they’re four or five years old, and here I am starting in eighth grade, so I was super late. My first season I was the worst player on the team at the beginning, but by the end I was probably one of the top three players, and it was then that I actually saw that I could go somewhere with it.”

Hockey is an odd route for Dixon seeing that his dad played professional basketball and now is the head coach at Gateway High School in Aurora. Even better, Dixon is pretty good at basketball. Speaking on his transition from hockey to basketball, the hardest adjustment has been the coaching styles. “With basketball the coaches would get mad and stuff, but with hockey they like cuss at you and it’s insane.”

Dixon also noticed the difference in playing hockey compared to other sports, “..the tensions that rise and then two, it’s a collision sport, but it’s also an intellectual sport. It’s not like football where you can just run and smash somebody. You have to make plays and everyone’s a ‘quarterback’ no matter what position they are.”

Dixon has been pretty successful in hockey since his first time playing in eighth grade. Dixon even began playing for Cherry Creek, but now he’s moved on to a higher level playing arena. “I played for Creek last spring and we played in varsity tier one that year. The team I’m playing for now is at a higher level because we’re Triple A. That’s as high of levels as it gets youth wise and it has better competition.”

The competition that Dixon is speaking of is very noticeable as he’s playing with 19, 20, and above age groups. He’s currently playing for the Colorado Thunderbirds in the Rocky Mountain Hockey League (RMHL) and with that he’s been invited into an all-star game which will take place January 14th. He’s looking to play professionally because for hockey, college isn’t usually the first step.

“The ultimate goal is to play overseas, but I plan to go play division one college hockey, and from there see what happens. Hockey’s weird because you have to do juniors before college, so I have a couple of junior tier two colleges contacting me.”