Ravenwood senior hockey player Tate Janasek (Photo courtesy of Through Our Lens, copyright 2012)

Meet Ravenwood's Tate Janasek
By CAROL STUART
Brentwood Home Page
Sometimes Ravenwood senior hockey player Tate Janasek continues to play after the whistle. Sure, the Raptors’ assistant captain is aggressive on the ice, but that’s not the reason.

Janasek is 100% deaf since birth and sometimes doesn’t hear the ref, although he carries on conversations like most anybody with the help of cochlear implants, lip-reading and years of speech therapy. The clip behind his ear for a microphone to pick up, interpret and sent signals to stimulate the auditory nerve is barely noticeable, less so than the Bluetooth earpiece his father is wearing around their house.

When Janasek represents the USA like on last year’s Deaflympics team, whose competition in Slovakia was cancelled at the last minute, Janasek and the other hearing-impaired skaters aren’t allowed to use any devices in the arena. Instead, strobe lights flash to indicate the whistle.

Tate Janasek's USA locker at Lake Placid, site of 1980 Miracle on Ice   RHS at Bridgestone Ravenwood’s hockey team plays on the Nashville Predators' ice at 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21, against Father Ryan at Bridgestone Arena.

But a couple of times a year, he is penalized playing in the Greater Nashville Area Scholastic Hockey league when coaches forget to advise the refs prior to the game.

“It’s like the way I’m facing. If I’m facing the other way than the ref, I won’t be able to hear,” Janasek said. “I’ll hear like four seconds later because it’ll be bouncing off the boards, the sound.”

But RHS captain Corbin Pefanis, the only other four-year player besides Janasek, said his friend is one of the better communicators on the ice for the 12-1 Raptors.

“I think he’s really developed into being a great communicator just through the years,” Pefanis said. “But we’ve all been playing together so long that we kind of do have that mental telepathy so we know where each other’s going to be, and we’ve really developed that quite strongly.

“He’s actually one of the best communicators on our team, tapping on the ice, calling for the puck and letting us know where we need to be. We kind of look to him as one of our better communicators.”

It’s also a nod to technology and how hard he and his family worked on his language skills that Janasek will study broadcasting and media management next year at Western Kentucky University.

“I want to do sports analysis like ESPN, or be behind the camera,” said Janasek, who takes Video Pro classes at Ravenwood.

Experiencing the Miracle ice at Lake Placid

While he attends WKU, Janasek will get the services of a captionist to  type notes from lecture classes. But he also wants to find ice time for pick-up hockey since the college doesn’t have a team even at club level.

Janasek played on the 2009 World Deaf Ice Championships bronze-medal hockey team for the USA in Winnipeg, scoring a goal in international competition as a 10th-grader, and he wants to try out again for next winter’s event in Finland. His experience with the American team a year ago for his first Deaflympics was cut short after a week of training at Lake Placid, N.Y., due to financial issues with the organizer.

“We were on the bus on our way to John F. Kennedy Airport, and we were scheduled to catch a flight to Vienna, Austria,” Janasek said. “We were supposed to spend two days in Vienna prior to Slovakia for our first game against Canada on Feb. 18.”

The team’s coach, legendary college hockey coach Jeff Sauer, got a call halfway to the airport and told the team after they stopped for lunch – their last meal on American soil before they departed to Europe. Instead they had to stay a night in New York City and then return home separately – and disappointed.

“We had all packed up our bags, put nutrients, Gatorade, tape rolls, everything we were prepared for, socks, shower stuff, jerseys, and we were just shocked what happened,” Janasek said.

Olympic training center at Lake Placid (Photo by Tate Janasek)

The USA team had won the gold at the ’07 Deaflympics when Tate wasn’t old enough, and some of the players are even in their 30s or older so Janasek was playing college-level type hockey.

“I know there’s another opportunity for me because I’m the youngest one on the team, but like for those other people in their early 40s and 30s, they lost half their life right there,” Tate said. “Our coach told us we had the strongest team ever since he’s been a USA coach.”

Just like the annual camp he attends in Chicago each June with the American Hearing-Impaired Hockey Association, Janasek still had an amazing hockey experience going to Lake Placid – site of the United States’ 1980 Miracle on Ice Olympic hockey upset of the Soviet Union.

“The scenes from the Miracle on Ice were some of the scenes we saw like in our own eyes, looking at the practice ice and the real ice, and the locker room we were in was the 1980 locker room,” Janasek said.

Asked by his dad if they practiced at night with the lights off doing sprints as in the movie Miracle, Tate said:  “We actually tried to do that. It was pretty funny. We didn’t do suicides; we did board jumps.”

During their training camp, the team played a New York state champion prep school team and practiced with Yale University. “We got to watch them and get some techniques from them,” Janasek said.

His mom, Michelle Janasek, who works with the Full Circle program at the Brentwood YMCA, called the turn of events “devastating” when the Deaflympics were cancelled.

“It was interesting because I kept getting nervous, who am I going to see, who is my roommate for the next month,” Tate said before the training camp.

“But when we all got there, everyone got along like they’re all brothers, and the team just united.  We all had stuff to talk about. Everybody was saying this is going to be the best team, this year. We’re stronger than ever.”

Pefanis said he could see how disappointing it was for his buddy.

“That’s been his goal ever since third or fourth grade,” Pefanis said. “. . .  He was really excited to go to Europe and represent America and do great things for us. It was unfortunate he had to come back, the way things ended up. . . . Hopefully it’ll work out in his favor again.”

Getting sticks taped, equipment taken care of

On the USA squad, Janasek got the royal treatment – with the team’s equipment manager having been the 2010 college champion Wisconsin’s equipment manager.  It was almost like he was a pro player like the Preds.

“He would tape our sticks, fix our skates, our helmet, make sure we had the right stuff, make sure it was clean every day,” said. “He had more work than we did.”

USA locker room used by the Miracle on Ice team in 1980 Olympics (Photo by Tate Janasek)

He also had a trainer that is the trainer for the Canadian Olympic women’s hockey team. And his top-notch coaches not only include Sauer, David Lasanne of Rochester-New Hampshire, and David Zimmerman.

Janasek also played against much older and bigger players on the USA team – including a 6-4 teammate who “kind of gave me a mild concussion. That was the guy at the training camp when my shoulder popped up.”

Some of the older players on the team didn’t have technology and are totally deaf, while others don’t speak any sign language, his mom says. And at the Winnipeg event in 2009, Janasek witnessed people using international as well as American sign language.

“It was my first time seeing people from different with different sign language barriers,” he said.

When playing at the hearing-impaired competitions, the players cannot use any devices after getting off the bus at the arena, in order to level the playing field.

"I can read the lips, but you can’t hear anything," Janasek said. "You can relax. You don’t have to worry about turning your head every five seconds and figure out who’s speaking to you."

Attending the AHIHA camps for a week every June since 2003 with some top-flight coaching have helped with his game – and also helped him with both defensive and offensive skills, his mom said.

“You’re not the only one that’s deaf that plays hockey, and you’ve got people from all over the United States,” Tate said about the camp.

While many of the players from colder-weather areas play hockey every day, hockey in the Brentwood and Nashville area has been getting more competitive. Janasek, the only Southern player on the USA hearing-impaired senior team, says he’s been “able to keep up with them. I was surprised though. Over the years, it gradually gets better and better since the first time I’ve been to that camp.”

In 2006 and ’09, he has won Most Outstanding Skater and Most Improved awards at the camp.

'Ultimate team player and a coach's dream' 

Pefanis helped get his neighbor Janasek started playing hockey, and now they are among seven seniors on the roster. Janasek, when he first moved to the area in first grade, was also influenced by watching an exchange student from Finland two doors down play hockey for Brentwood.

“All my friends around here, especially Corbin, like right down the street, he got me into playing hockey and I just started loving it and everyone else around us started playing,” Tate said.

Current seniors Pefanis, Nathan Traczewski and Taylor Griffin were all on one team when they ended up in the same second-grade class with Janasek, who also tried soccer and T-ball. Pefanis got the other two to join the RHS squad their sophomore season after playing on a club team as freshmen, and they’re among the best Raptor players now.

Janasek is one of seven seniors on the 12-1 Raptors team. (Photo courtesy of Through Our Lens, copyright 2012)

Janasek said Pefanis is the one who keeps him playing sports, including lacrosse, where they both also compete for the Ravenwood club team.

“He is probably the fastest player on the [hockey] team,” Corbin said about Tate.  “He’s got a good shot, good hands; he sees the ice really well.  He’s a great athlete overall.”

One thing that makes Janasek valuable also is that he’ll play on both ends of the ice, whereas most players are usually offensive or defensive players.

 “He's a great assistant captain, easily one of the hardest workers on the team, and is very vocal with the rest of the team with regards to defensive responsibilities as a team,” new Ravenwood head coach Al Rooney said.

“Quite honestly, he has the talent to be one of the leading scorers of not only our team, but of the league. But Tate plays the role I've laid out for him this season, no questions asked. And that is to play a well rounded game and take care of all three zones, not just be going all out for points. He is an ultimate team player and a coach's dream.”

Janasek plays defense on the penalty kill, is an excellent skater and leads by example with hustle and back checks, Rooney added.

While sometimes he is penalized for shooting or checking after the play is dead, Janasek also admits there are times he pretends he doesn’t hear what his coaches are saying.

“There’s a lot of times,” he says, laughing. “Since I’m a senior now, I’ve known these (assistant) coaches for a long time.”

Pefanis said teammates help Janasek out with understanding of the game and tap their sticks or get his attention in other ways if he can’t hear them that well.

(Photo courtesy of Through Our Lens, copyright 2012)

Janasek, who might soon have to get an upgrade to his technology – which can be hard to adjust to – said his cochlear implant attachment fits under the helmet fine. Communicating with his teammates isn’t an issue, he added.

“Over the years it’s gotten a lot easier. I just know what they’re saying,” he said, especially as he’s learned more about the game. “You just know the flow. It’s not as hard. You can read the lips on the ice, and you can hear them on the ice.”

Rooney, who has played and coached at the professional level, says he has “nothing but good things to say” about Janasek.

 “I have no doubt that this young man is going to be successful in whatever he chooses to do in life,” the coach said.