Billet families help young hockey players keep on skating

By Daron Mark

Every year, Alan and Jean Samuelson open their home to young men who come to Salmon Arm to pursue hockey careers in the British Columbia Hockey League (BCHL). As billets, they provide players with a house to live in and food to eat during the eight-month season. More importantly, the Samuelsons provide support and stability to these young men as they adjust to a new environment.

“We moved here in 2006 and we stared billeting the next year," Jean Samuelson said.

The Samuelsons are just one of hundreds of billet families across the province. Hockey leagues such as the BCHL, Kootenay International Junior Hockey League,  and Western Hockey League all rely on billet families to accommodate players who come from other towns to play for their teams.

Billet families receive a food allowance to cover the cost of cooking for growing teenagers but are not paid for the service.

Terms such as “sacrifice,” “commitment” and “endurance” are often used in the sports arena to describe the life of an athlete, but they are just as appropriate in describing the daily grind of being a billet family like the Samuelsons.

“They do their personal laundry, but we do daily towels and bedding once a week,” Jean said.

Of course, preparing food is also very important when hosting teenagers, if you can get them out of bed in the morning.

“The way their schedule goes, we can’t get three meals in," Alan Samuelson said. "We offer, but they like to sleep instead of eating.”

Add to these daily duties tasks that normally would be tackled by player’s parents and it can become a ful- time job. Jean is routinely asked to sew and mend broken hockey equipment and patch suit coats torn after being caught on door handles.

Alicia Davies, billet co-ordinator for the Salmon Arm Silverbacks, is grateful for the Samuelson's willingness to help young players as they break into the league.

“They are unbelievably generous people,” she said. “They have had at some times four to five boys in their house at one time which is quite a task when you consider you’re feeding teenagers.”

These tasks only make up part of the important role that billet families are asked to play in the lives of young hockey athletes. Beyond the cleaning and cooking, “you get a lot of chances to encourage kids,” Alan said.

“We try and treat them like adults…at this stage you want to encourage them.”

That includes making sure players young enough to be in high school keep up with their studies.

“We’re not responsible, but we want the kids to be successful,” Alan said.

Kyle Oleniuk, who came from Saskatchewan to play for the Silverbacks, said the Samuelsons were a big help as he adjusted to his new life in Salmon Arm.

“I’m from Moose Jaw, so a long ways away,” he said. “They’ve been really supportive through it and I can’t thank them enough.  They act like parents for us, they know they’re not parents but they have really welcomed us into the home. They have been there for us for everything so far and hopefully they will be in the future.”

Unfortunately not every story has such a positive outcome.

“We had one case where we did end up that the boy was sent home," Jean said. "We discovered that he had been in hospital for mental issues and I think the parents thought ‘if we take him out here and set him up in hockey it would all be okay'.”

Davies acknowledged billet families and players sometimes have negative experiences.

“You know there is always going to be in some cases a player that does end up moving because they don’t fit with the family very well,” she said.

But she said that's rare.

“We have a very excellent group of billets and so all the boys tend to feel quite at home there,” she said.

The Samuelsons have seen a long list of hockey players pass through their doors. Some of them, like Mark Zengerle, have gone on to play college hockey in the United States.

But even after leaving, most players still maintain contact with their billet families.

“We’re still in touch with pretty much all of them,” Jean said.