I moved around to a few different areas of St. Louis, MO growing up. My elementary years I was in South City which is a very Catholic community. If you look at my school resume, every school starts with a “Saint”.
In high school, I moved out to South Country. A lot of fun. I got to play street hockey in the streets every single day in the 115-degree weather outside. I’ve always been big on sports growing up. I have an ice hockey background so the person who really influenced me a lot is a goal tender named Curtis Joseph. He played for the St. Louis Blues. He’s going to be a hall of fame goal tender, and he actually made me want to play ice hockey.
But he was always so well spoken. He ran a couple charities and when he got traded away to Canada, he always maintained those charities. He was a great role model for me. Just the way he treated people, the way he and his family impacted the St. Louis community. I always looked up to him.
I went to St. Mary’s University in a small town called Wynona. It’s right on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. I studied public relations and communications. It was a lot of reporting classes so sadly a lot of those classes, I don’t really use them. Except for my emails! My emails are pretty good.
But I went up there to play ice hockey. To play college ice hockey was an absolute thrill in Minnesota. It was an experience I’ll never forget.