Arlington Hts. family spent a quarter-century ice side
A quarter-century of youth hockey ended for the Thornton family of Arlington Heights Friday night when St. Viator played in the championship game.
The whole clan, including in-laws, showed up to cheer on Keegan, a senior and the youngest of four brothers who each played four years at St. Viator and starting skating at age 4 or 5.
It's a good thing Pat and Heather Thornton thought it was a great way, win or lose, to end their run as hockey parents because the Lions lost 5-0 to St. Rita.
Games and practices over 25 years meant Heather and Patrick Thornton missed a trip to Hawaii with extended family, uncounted family dinners and a generation of Saturday nights out.
And while the boys traveled to places like Lake Placid, N.Y.; Florida; Colorado; and innumerable rinks in Wisconsin and Michigan, it was always with only one parent since the other one had to go to other youngsters' games. The only Thornton family hockey trip was to Toronto because the couple wanted their youngsters to see Niagara Falls, where they honeymooned.
After the decades of hockey marathon, Patrick is most looking forward to Sunday night family dinners, and Heather thinks she might get to spend some time at the family's vacation home.
Keegan earned all this family attention not only by being the only Thornton whose team made it to the championship game, but also by playing with action figures as a youngster while his older brothers were on the ice and his mother nursed a baby in the bleachers.
Heather, who didn't know what hockey was before her oldest son, Patrick, now 29, took to the ice, said she has mellowed over the years and “isn't as bad at games.” She, of course, had a baby on her hip years ago when she got tossed from a game for complaining about a referee's calls.
“I wasn't swearing or anything like that,” she says. But she was in a balcony where her complaints were more audible than in regular bleachers.
Keegan, who also has three sisters whose sport is soccer, might play hockey at Loyola University in Chicago, like his brother, Austin, 26, who played at Dayton University. But college pucks are just not the same for their parents, who caught only one Dayton game because they had so much hockey going on at home.
“When one graduated, we always knew there was another coming along,” said Patrick, president of the school's hockey club board.
“After all this amount of time it's really cool, making it all the way to this final game,” he said. “It gives us time to think and reflect. It's been about as good a final season as you could wish for.”