Tony F. Sansone, Jr. and his wife, Peggy, were sitting in the Toronto airport waiting for connecting flights. While reading a Reader's Digest, Tony saw an article about an ice hockey program in the Toronto area for developmentally disabled young men and women. The program, The Grandravine Tornadoes of Toronto, was started 12 years earlier by Pat and Joan Flick. Tony was interested enough about the program that he contacted Pat Flick on his return to St. Louis.
Pat explained about the program and that their biggest disappointment was the fact there were were no other developmentally disabled teams for them to play games against. This stuck in Tony's mind for almost two years. The biggest problem was being able to find the ice time that was consistent every week for the program to develop.
Along came Kelly Chase of the St. Louis Blues who owned a parking lot paint striping company and had done some business for Tony's company. Tony expressed his desire to start such a team in St. Louis but was blocked by the lack of available ice and the cost. At the time, the Blues were practicing at Brentwood Ice Rink and Brentwood wanted the Blues to do a hockey school in the summer. Chase approached Brentwood and agreed to put together a summer hockey school called the Gateway Hockey School if Brentwood would make available the necessary ice time for the Gateway Special Hockey Program. The ice became available on Mondays at noon to
1:30 and Chase operated the summer hockey school and donated all profits to Gateway to pay for the ice. Chase is active in the program, knows the players by name and attends practices when not practicing himself at Chesterfield.
Gateway Special Hockey first hit the ice on January 31, 1994 with 17 athletes and the assistance of a number of Tony's friends who he recruited to help coach the athletes. Pat and Joan Flick were on hand to help get the program started. Over the Thanksgiving weekend in 1994 Pat and Joan Flick brought their Grandravine Tornadoes to St. Louis and the first ever game between two separate programs of developmentally disabled athletes was played with the Tornadoes winning the tournament, 2 games to one. This historical event in the history of amateur hockey was noted by a display of memorabilia from the tournament in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, Canada.
St. Louis hosted the tournament over the Thanksgiving weekend for the next two years. In 1995 we had four teams, two from the Toronto area, the Tornadoes and Durham Dragons, a spin-off from Pat's original group, and the Ottawa Valley Ambassadors from Ottawa, Canada. In 1996 we had 7 teams, two Tornado teams, two Durham teams and a team from Denver, Colorado (The Colorado Golden Eagles) and a team from New York (the New York Raptors).
In the Spring of 1996 a new league was formed of the current teams from the 1996 tournament and the league name is Special Hockey International - The Heart League. The league now has one annual tournament that will be hosted by a different team each year. This tournament provides the only opportunity for these special athletes to compete against their true peers. Without this, they would have no competition.
We currently skate two 12 week sessions with one before Christmas; and one after the first of the year. We now have 35+ athletes ranging in age from 4 to 40 years of age. The cost is $150 per year plus a small registration fee with USA Hockey. Gateway provides all necessary equipment for those in need, when available. All Gateway athletes and coaches are registered with USA Hockey, Inc. and Missouri Hockey, Inc. the national and local governing bodies for amateur hockey.
Gateway's funding has been all donations from individuals, some corporations and groups such as the Blueliner's, Goaltenders and the St. Louis Olympic Festival Committee or the St. Louis Sports Authority and the St. Louis Blues Hockey Club. We are planning fund-raisers for the upcoming season.
We have two sessions per season:
Session I runs from September through Mid-December
Session II runs from January through Early April