It all started before Clint Walden was even born, with a couple of hockey tickets.
More than 17 years ago, Carney and Terry Walden decided to go watch a Tampa Bay Lightning game in person because, well, why not? The next thing they knew, they were hooked. And, it didn’t take long for their two young sons to catch the bug.
Now, Carney and Clint are about to go on hockey exodus — a six-month trip to New Jersey, where Clint will play for a local U18 team in hopes of getting noticed.
“There’s been a bunch of guys coming out of New Jersey, lately, that have gotten drafted to the NHL,” Carney Walden says. “That’s where scouts are, is up in the Northeast. You’ve got to go to where it’s at.”
It’s a big commitment, especially for a high school senior and his father, to take on. But, no one in the family can say they didn’t see this coming.
BUILDING UP TO THIS
David Walden was the first of the brothers to go to a Lightning game with their parents, and that was what initially piqued Clint’s interest.
“After the first game my brother went to, he told them he wanted to play hockey,” Clint says. “Naturally, I just wanted to play hockey, too.”
At 4 years old, Clint started learning the game and playing in youth leagues at the Brandon Ice Sports Forum. He started out on the wings, but, after moving from Mites to Squirts, he was switched to center, where he’s now most comfortable. A huge fan of Martin St. Louis, Clint has tried to incorporate much of the former Lightning great’s playing style into his own.
As a high school freshman at Durant, an opportunity arose: players from Durant, Plant City and Strawberry Crest were coming together to form a club team, and Clint got in on the action.
“We got a Durant team together, because most of the kids went to Durant,” he says.
After two seasons, the team had no choice but to disband because of a lack of players. Whoever was left went into a pool, and most ended up joining other schools’ club teams. Clint ended up playing for Wiregrass Ranch High School’s club team, which made the playoffs last year.
Wiregrass plays in the Lightning Conference of the Florida High School Hockey Association, and Clint had a great season. He led the conference with 61 points and 51 goals. Even though he’s leaving for New Jersey soon, Clint still likes to suit up and play with Wiregrass when he can.
“Clint’s a good hockey player,” Wiregrass Ranch coach Gordie Zimmermann says. “He still plays on our team, when he’s in town.”
This being Florida, though, it’s not always easy to get noticed by college and junior scouts. It was definitely a season for Clint to be proud of, but the senior knew that he wanted to take his love for the game as far as he could go — even if it meant going up north.
LONG TIME COMING
“For, probably the last six years, we’ve been sort of planning this,” Carney says. “I mean, if it happened, it happened.”
This year, it finally happened. An opportunity for Clint to play on a high-level U18 team, the North Jersey Avalanche, arose, and Carney was willing to help Clint make it happen.
So, the two recently began making trips to New Jersey to begin settling in. They got an apartment in Saddle Brook, near Hackensack, about 10 minutes from Clint’s rink. And, to make sure that Clint finishes his high school education, he’s enrolled in Florida Virtual School for his senior year.
Or, at least six months of it. In March, when the season ends, the Waldens will return to Plant City and Clint hopes to come back to Durant and finish where he started —walking across the stage with his friends. Six months without seeing them, besides at Christmas, is a long time.
“The hardest part will be not being able to see the friends I’ve made down here throughout the years,” Clint says.
Terry plans to fly from Florida to New Jersey to catch some of Clint’s games, but, for the most part, it will just be Carney and Clint living together. Don’t feel bad for them, though. They’re still going to be surrounded by their family.
“Hockey is like a big family,” Carney says. “The team is like a big family. … His coach, when he was really young, told me that I now have two families. I didn’t understand what he was meaning, and he says, ‘You have your family, but now you’ve got a hockey family.’ And, you probably spend more time with your hockey family than with your family.”
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.
CLIMBING THE RANKS
The North Jersey Avalanche is an organization based in Hackensack, New Jersey, and fields the U18 team for which Clint Walden plays. It’s teams like this that often serve as springboards for hockey players to move up.
“After I’m finished with U18 hockey, I want to play one or two years of junior hockey, do some community college classes and then move on to a college,” Clint says. “Colleges don’t want you until you’re 20, 21 years old. They want you to be mature.”
That’s not unusual. Colleges often do much of their scouting in the juniors, preferring to pick up seasoned players — in contrast to sports like baseball, for which colleges scout high schools more often.
Hockey’s infrastructure is similar to that of baseball but also shares some traits with soccer. Many pro teams have their own junior squads, for example, and for Clint to play on a junior affiliate would not be unlike what Omar Castro is currently doing with Eintracht Braunschweig.