Youth hockey program in Washington helped Marine persevere

WASHINGTON --When Ralph Featherstone started playing hockey in the seventh grade, he didn't know the impact the sport would have on his life.
In fact, he didn't even like it.

"I hated hockey the first year I played. Absolutely hated it," he said. "I hated it because I'm a fairly competitive guy and I realized that I couldn't skate well. All my friends were so much better than I was and every time I got on the ice it was a constant reminder of how far I had to go."

How far Featherstone, now 40 and a lieutenant colonel and U.S. Marine Corps aviator, has come since then is a testament to the perseverance he learned while playing for the Fort Dupont Cannons Ice Hockey Club beginning back then. Founded in 1977, the Cannons are the oldest minority hockey program in North America and part of the NHL's Hockey Is For Everyone initiative.
Featherstone learned to love the game through the Cannons and said he believes they are the embodiment of the Declaration of Principles the NHL and NHL Players' Association launched in September. The core of the Declaration of Principles is that hockey builds character and teaches life lessons that can help guide players throughout their lives, and that the goal should be to create better people, not only better players.
"We push character development over skill development," said Featherstone, a volunteer assistant with the Cannons. "We push integrity, teamwork and compassion for your teammate over how many goals you can score. Now, winning games is important, but winning in life is a bigger deal here at Fort Dupont."

Featherstone grew up a five-minute drive from Fort Dupont Ice Arena, the only full-size indoor ice arena in Washington, and is living in his old neighborhood while stationed as a desk officer at the Joint Strike Fighter Program office in Arlington, Virginia. His 9-year-old son, Ralph, just completed his second season playing for the Cannons and learning the same lessons.
"I learned a lot of these things at home as well, but your preparation, being precise when you execute your task, and probably the most beneficial thing that I learned here was persistence and perseverance," Featherstone said. "You don't quit. You stay with something even though it may be difficult initially. And those things enabled my success not only on the ice, but outside of the ice as well."

This is what coach Neal Henderson, 80, had in mind when he started the program 41 years ago.
"It's to teach the element of being included and being able to show their worth and to build character and also to show that they can be among the few people that work, live and attain anything in life," Henderson said.
Featherstone has done that, overcoming his share of obstacles along his way from Fort Dupont to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, to flying in F/A-18s.
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Growing up in Washington and playing for the Cannons, Featherstone said, he never felt like a minority. But as the only African-American on the Naval Academy's club hockey team, he initially felt like an outsider.

"I just was uncomfortable and I don't know why," he said. "No one did anything to make me uncomfortable. I just kind of felt a bit out of place. Over time, that went away. As I developed friendships and relationships on the team, I felt more and more comfortable and at home."
Featherstone was limited to playing on the second penalty-killing unit at first. He gradually worked his way into a regular role at center and was voted captain by his teammates his senior season.
"Starting my senior year as the team captain was a big story for me at least for my personal life of persevering and just staying with it," Featherstone said.
That approach served Featherstone well again at flight school in Pensacola, Florida.
He became interested in flying as a boy when his uncle, Leo Albury, a commercial airline pilot, would take him and his cousins up in a small Cessna. But sitting in the back of an F/A-18 is different than doing so in a Cessna.
"I had about a 15-month stretch in flight school where I would get airsick," Featherstone said. "Two, three times a week I would be throwing up and it was to the point where after a while I just wanted to kind of not do that anymore."

Then, he'd hear Henderson's voice in his head.
"I'd kind of remember these, 'You never quit, you never give up' type of lessons and 'You have to work for things you say you want and nobody is going to give you anything,'" Featherstone said. "Eventually the airsickness went away and I was able to continue on. That's just one example of how I've taken the lessons from Fort Dupont and applied it to my life."
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When the Washington Capitals hosted the Cannons for a clinic at their practice facility in Arlington on Feb. 3, forward Devante Smith-Pelly was one of the Capitals players who helped. Having played in a similar youth program, Skillz Hockey, as a child in Toronto, Smith-Pelly appreciates the Cannons' purpose.
"They help a lot of kids," Smith-Pelly said. "They're doing a great thing. They're helping a lot of low-income underprivileged kids play a sport that's pretty expensive."
After Smith-Pelly was the target of racial taunts by four fans during a game in Chicago on Feb. 17, a Chicago Tribune reader and columnist Steve Rosenbloom suggested fans show their support for Smith-Pelly by contributing to a charity of his choice. Smith-Pelly picked the Fort Dupont Cannons (a youth hockey club supported by the Hockey Is For Everyone program for over 20 years), and more than $30,000 was raised.
Featherstone experienced something similar when he was playing at Navy and an opponent called him a racial slur. In the aftermath, he again leaned on his upbringing and what he learned with the Cannons.

"My dad's thing was, 'Hey, if that's going to bother you, maybe that's not the sport you want to play,'" Featherstone said. "Because if guys know that they can do that and upset you, then they'll use that against you. That's something that Coach [Henderson] preaches all the time."
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Featherstone grew up rooting for the Capitals, attending games at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, and continues to follow them. So it was special for him when they played against the Toronto Maple Leafs at the 2018 Coors Light NHL Stadium Series at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium on March 3.
Featherstone was honored between periods for his service in the Marine Corps and work with the Cannons with a video tribute on the end-zone scoreboard screens. Standing there watching it in his Marine Corps uniform, Featherstone fought to control his emotions.
"Every aspect of my life was there, and my family was there to see it too, and it tied them in," he said. "And the coaching piece, there were pictures of some of the kids that we coach here. So, it was like, wow, this has checked every box for me and it was just really awesome."

No matter where Featherstone's Marine Corps duties have taken him, he's returned to help with the Cannons when he's been back in the area. He's moving to San Diego this summer to take command of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 225 at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in 2019.
Featherstone has already signed his son up to play on a team in the San Diego area. They'll take the lessons they learned at Fort Dupont and from Henderson with them.
"I'm very, very proud of him," Henderson said. "I wish for him to go as far as he can. It will be sad when he goes, but I know that he will return."