Junior Cameron Yingling reached past his skates for his prized possession before every hockey match: the Sitting Bulls spirit stick. He crept over to his teammate’s sports bag and slid it into one of the pockets. As the clamor around the rink grew, the Sitting Bulls junior team snuck the spirit stick into each other’s hockey bags for their pre-match ritual.

“Usually, the whole team goes down on the ice, and then we spend a few minutes just skating around and hitting the puck,” Yingling said. “The warm up period will be over, so we go back to the bench and then [the officials] talk to us and tell us who all is going to start and where they’re going to start. Then everyone just goes out on the ice, and the [referee] will ask if everyone’s ready. Then they’ll drop the puck.”

Sitting Bulls Sled Hockey is an all-volunteer organization across the Cambria, Somerset, Indiana, Bedford, Blair, Franklin and Monroe counties that gives people with physical disabilities the opportunity to play competitive hockey. 

“My son, [Ethan], has spina bifida, and we’ve always looked for a sport that he could actually participate in,” founding board member and adult team coach Brian Buchkovich said. “My brother’s sons play regular stand up hockey. [My brother] found out that the Mighty Penguins were going to give a demonstration at a Chiefs game. A group of us went, and we saw that Mighty Penguins are another sled hockey team from Pittsburgh. We saw the demonstration, thought that was fantastic and got together six original members of the Sitting Bulls.”

The Sitting Bulls junior team was founded at the start of the 2008-09 season.

“I’ve been coaching since we started, since 2008,” Brian Buchkovich said. “I have two other boys that are older than Ethan. I’ve coached football, I’ve coached baseball, I’ve coached soccer. When it came to Ethan and his sport, I’m just naturally the type of personality that if something needs done, I jump and do it, and we needed a coach. I have experience coaching but not in hockey. I’ve never played hockey, just on a pond with a stick and a rock, sometimes with my brothers and a friend. It was a learning process for me as well, learning the specific role and different ways to coach these guys, because it is different.”

“[Sled hockey] changed my life for the better,” Yingling said. “I’ve made a bunch of friends on the hockey team. It gives me something to do rather than just sit at home, because I obviously can’t really do anything else, like baseball or football.”

As the Sitting Bulls junior sled hockey team grew older, the program expanded to include an adult team that competes in the Northeast Sled Hockey League upper Metropolitan Division. 

“The pinnacle of the sport is the Paralympics,” Ethan Buchkovich said. “I’m trying to help my teammate Wesley [Clowson] make it to the Paralympic team this year, and if not, we’re definitely aiming for the next four-year cycle. My dream is for both of us to be on the next Paralympic cycle, and that would be in France in 2030.”

Ethan Buchkovich has attended the National Sled Hockey Player Development camp at least four times. He trains multiple days per week in hopes of joining the National Sled Hockey team. Clowson made the National Sled Hockey team and qualified for the practice team for the Paralympics last year. Their time together has cultivated a close bond on and off the ice.

“[Sled hockey] has been the foundation of many, many aspects of my life,” Ethan Buchkovich said. “It has taught me a lot of life skills, from working in team settings to problem solving to pushing through certain obstacles, whereas—if we lose to that team, we want to beat them the next time—continuing to grow social skills. Being around a team with similar disabilities and such has formed a significant portion of who I am as a person.”

Ethan Buchkovich has formed friendships with other sled hockey players from across the East Coast. He recently obtained his level one coaching degree.

“A lot of disabled sports coddle disabled people and treat them as sort of delicate,” Ethan Buchkovich said. “I don’t like that stereotype. Sled hockey is full contact, full tracking and that really grabbed my interest.”

“I’ve had to learn to coach these guys because it is brand new to them and me, so they had to have patience with me, and I had to have patience with them,” Brian Buchkovich said. “My ability and my love of the sport grew out of it… that was the biggest thing, my love of the game grew, my love of the players. I knew that wasn’t a surprise, because that always happens when you’re coaching. You really get to like your players. They become like family. Even years later, seeing them, they’re like one of your kids.”