Catching a Healey family member between games is a feat, let alone catching all five of them in one room at one time.
But this year will be easier for the family as Tyler, Sydney and Keira Healey have made Waterloo Wolves AAA hockey teams for the 2015-16 season.
“We’ve never had all of them play in the same city,” said the children’s father Craig Healey.
“We’re excited because we’ve never been in the same place, like during tryouts Michelle and I sat together, back to back games, normally we just text. I’ll be in one city, she’ll be in another city.”
All three siblings have been playing hockey for years, learning to skate when they were five.
“When we moved out to the country we knew that we would have to support the kids’ Sports, because that’s their social life,” said Craig. “The more Sports they play, the more rinks they go to, the more kids they hang out with.”
Tyler, 12, will be joining the Waterloo Wolves Minor Bantam team. His sisters say he’s the most competitive, but Craig said it helps push the girls to be better.
“We work together on stuff and once it comes to goals we are very competitive,” said Sydney.
Father Craig and mother Michelle don’t mind the competitiveness, but they want their kids to be supportive too.
“If you support each other as much as you compete against each other, you would do so much better,” said Craig.
Sydney, 10, is on the Minor Pee Wee team of the Waterloo Wolves. She’s the family cheerleader.
With each of the siblings being at different rinks on different days, it was hard to have that family time, said Michelle. Now the siblings will be there to watch each other and be a bigger support system.
Kiera, 9, is happy to join the Wolves at Minor Atom because it means no early morning practice.
The girls are excited to play with the boys. “It’s fun to score, its fun to be rough, it's fun to beat boys up,” said Sydney. “We get to show off (to) the boys of how awesome we are.”
The girls have a lot to prove to their teammates. Luckily, they have support from their male teammates, but in games, the girls don’t get the same response from other teams.
“The boys get a little upset when they see it’s not a boy hitting them it’s a girl,” said Michelle.
All three siblings want to be professional hockey players. Sydney wants them to be on the same pro team.
“If all three of us were on the same team, we would be awesome,” she said gleefully.
