Making the long trek

When Rick Soo came to the SilverBacks training camp, there was one particular trait that gave him an edge: speed.

“He’s got really good speed. He’s a fast player. He skates really well,” says SilverBacks General Manager Rylan Ferster.

Soo was born in the United States but spent his early years in Singapore and Japan before going back to the States. When he left Boston at the age of three he was a dedicated Bruins fan. He started playing hockey in Singapore when he was six.  Hockey isn’t a big sport there and his skating skills got off to a slow start.

“In Singapore the rinks are half the size of regular rinks. When I was younger I was not a good skater.”

He laughs as he recalls his reaction as an eight-year-old boy when he went from Singapore, where there were two mini ice rinks, to Tokyo.

“All the rinks are Olympic size. On the ice I skated a lap. This is going to be hard. It’s not what I’m used to.

For the first four years I was the slowest guy out there. I couldn’t keep up to the team.”

In Tokyo he belonged to the rink team so he was allowed to skate at the public skates free of charge. He took advantage of that.

“I went three or four times a week but I was still pretty slow. Now speed is one of the things I have.”

Soo attended an International School in Tokyo before going back to the States. He went to St. Mary’s in Minnesota for grades 8, 9 and 10.  He heard about the school from a friend.

“My first year I was in the second team. The style (of hockey) was completely different. I was still kind of small. I had a good year and next year I was in the top band team. We went to Nationals but we didn’t win.”

That was the U-14 playoffs in 2006. In 2007 he went to Nationals again, the U-16, and the team came home with the silver medal.

He was scouted by the Surrey Eagles and even played preseason with them. When he found out that getting a waiver allowing him to play was going to take a while, he opted to go back to Japan to finish high school.

Soo went to Tomakomai, a port city in northern Japan. His school, Komazawa Senior High School, is famous for its baseball and hockey teams.

“I think our dry land training was the hardest in the world,” says Soo.

After their ice training, which lasted an hour and a half, the coach drilled them in speed and endurance on their 7.5-kilometre course for about two-and-a-half hours.

“Every day we’d do rock, paper, scissors. If we won it was one lap, for a tie, three laps and if we lost, five laps.”

They also had to sprint up a “half mountain.” And they didn’t get a lot of time off in the summer either.

“Every summer we had to run a metric marathon, 26 km, to the town next to us. If you didn’t cut it, you didn’t play the next year.”

Through his connections with the Surrey Eagles, Soo learned about the BCHL and came to the prospects camp. He was invited back for the SilverBacks main camp and was given a place on the team. He is already in a routine, has friends and when he isn’t practising, he is getting out into the community. 

“The scenery is really nice here, the mountains and the trees. I like small towns, it helps me stay focused.”

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