Ean Somoza (Ice Hockey, Minnesota State University, Mankato) grew up in Simi Valley. HelloNation asks student athletes one question about the place that raised them and records the answer on camera. This is Ean Somoza’s, in full.
The question
Tell a story about a moment when your hometown came together or achieved something that made you proud.
The answer, as recorded
Transcript. What follows is a transcript of the video above, in Ean Somoza’s own words. It has not been rewritten, and no part of it was drafted for them.
Tell a story about a moment when your hometown came together or achieved something that made you proud. So one vivid memory I really have is my brother getting a Division One hockey commitment. I might have been eight or nine years old at the time, but the town or from Simi Valley, it's really not known for hockey. And especially at that time hockey in Southern California was still very small and not very, very widespread. And especially in Simi Valley, like the rink was tiny and nobody had really made it out of Simi Valley, so to say. But my brother played for the local team there, the California Titans, and he'd always played locally. And if you're going to make it out of Southern California, you kind of had to leave at a young age. But he had stuck with it and he had done really good. And it ended up getting him a Division One hockey commitment at the age of 16. So I just felt, even at eight or nine years old, I just felt so proud and so many emotions. It was just kind of flooding through me and it was almost like a sense of hope. He's a huge role model for me. And to see him get a hockey commitment at 16, it's like, okay, it lays the foundation. It's very possible. I can do this. I think that's something that made me very proud.
Recorded by HelloNation as part of its athlete voices program and published by Hello Newswire, HelloNation’s good news newswire. The words are the speaker’s own.
Reported by Hello Newswire.