Noah Grove barely hit the ice as an 11-year-old when he knew he found a new favorite sport.
“We were doing a tri-sled hockey event at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, a facility in Baltimore which has a lot of things. I loved it from the first time out there,” said the two-time United States sled hockey Paralympian. “I didn’t want to get off the ice.”
Hockey continues to be a joy for Grove, a 23-year-old diagnosed with bone cancer in his left leg shortly before his fifth birthday and had it amputated not long after he turned 5. The native of Frederick, Maryland, will represent the Boston Bruins when he plays at the 2022 USA Hockey Sled Classic presented by the NHL at Great Park Ice & FivePoint Arena in Irvine, California beginning Thursday.
Participating teams must have an official affiliation with an NHL member club and represent their affiliated club by wearing official NHL licensed jerseys with local club marks and logos.
Grove won gold at the 2018 and 2022 Paralympic Winter Games. He’s also won three medals at the World Para Ice Hockey Championships, silver in 2017 and gold in 2019 and 2021.
“I got to know Noah when he started coming to USA Hockey Sled Camps, he was 15 or 16 at the time,” United States sled hockey team coach David Hoff said. “To see him grow into a very mature young man, someone who’s working on a college degree, who loves to read, this is beyond the fact that he’s a good sled hockey player. It’s been cool to see him grow as a person. We were just joking at one of our last camps. There are guys around younger than Noah. He’s not that old right now, but it’s been nice to see him mature.”
Grove said “it was really scary” when he got his cancer diagnosis. He credits his family for being supportive and trying to keep him from getting down.
“I didn’t quite grasp the severity of it,” he said. “I was 5. I couldn’t think that far ahead, how it would affect me today at 23 or how it would affect me 10-20 years down the road. I just remember it was very difficult for my family to go through that. .
“One thing that is said about pediatric cancer, it’s not just a pediatric illness, it’s a family disease as well. It can put a lot of strain on families and relationships within families. I think that one of the good things my parents (Chris and Rachael) did was they were always very positive. They never really showed a lot of weakness around me. They’d say, ‘If you’re going to cry or say something negative, Noah cannot be in the room for that.’ So I remember always being pretty positive, except chemo, which was the worst part. I commend my family for how well they did.”
Sports became a great outlet for Grove. He was introduced to amputee soccer around the same time he started playing sled hockey and made the national team at age 15. The game is played with metal crutches and without prosthesis, the one exception being that bi-lateral amputees may play with a prosthesis.
“I was pretty actively involved in that,” he said. “But sled hockey was always my first love.”
Grove is an accomplished athlete and a cancer survivor. With the Hockey Fights Cancer program recognized around the NHL this month, he also helps at some of those events.
“It’s extremely important to have this,” Grove said. “[Cancer] is something that we all wish would go away but can’t. Not yet at least. Hopefully in the future. And for now, it means a lot to see massive organizations like the NHL doing what they can to help give back to the communities, especially cancer patients and cancer survivors.
“Their lives are drastically altered by what’s happening and on levels you may not understand unless you live that.”
Photos courtesy of USA Hockey
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