By Warren Kozireski —
(Photo featured Haley Winn)
It’s been a special year in the Winn household in Webster. Well, not exactly in the household.
Hockey families already know about the travel and sacrifices needed to make a go of it as their children rise through the hockey ranks. It’s quite a bit when you have one or two kids going through it with parents often taking each child in a separate direction for the weekend.
Try doing it for four.
Over the first half of this season, Janet and Mike Winn had to decide which child’s game they would see between Casey playing defense as a graduate student at SUNY Brockport; Ryan, a senior defenseman at Bowdoin College in Maine; Tommy, a freshman defenseman at SUNY Geneseo or Haley, a freshman defense for Division I Clarkson University.
So how did hockey become the family sport?
“My dad never even played; he just went to Clarkson which is a big hockey school and he loved going to the games and watching, built a backyard rink for us one year when I was six (years old) and that was it,” Casey said.
And now “they are in a different place every weekend…and always together.”
“There is only 18 months between me and Ryan, so me and him kind of built the way for Tommy and Haley I guess, but Haley’s the best out of all of us; she’s a stud.”
No doubt about that. She spent two years with the Selects Academy at Bishop Kearney, was a member of U-18 Women’s National Team 2019 (silver medal), the U-18 Women’s National Team 2020 (gold medal), went to U-15 National camp (2019), USA Select 70 Camp (2020) and the USA National Festival (2019, 2020).
As of late-February, she was fifth on the Golden Knights and the top freshman in scoring with 23 points including seven goals playing in all of the first 36 games this season.
Casey and Ryan played high school hockey together and won a state championship in 2014 at Webster-Schroeder. They stayed together until Casey’s junior year when he headed off to junior hockey in the CCHL with Nepean, Ontario near Ottawa.
Ryan played 11 games over four seasons with Bowdoin after his three seasons with the Webster-Schroeder and another three with Trinity-Pawling prep school on the Hudson River just north of White Plains.
“That (Webster-Schroeder) was a special team and when you win a championship with any team, it’s going to be up there with the best memories,” Casey said.
And Tommy is just beginning his collegiate career as well with the Knights. He took a little more circuitous route after playing as an eighth and ninth-grader at Webster followed by two seasons with the Rochester Monarchs at two levels before following his older brother to Nepean in the CCHL. He split 2019-20 between Nepean and Hawkesbury and added the New Jersey Hitmen to the resume in 2020-21 because the border was closed due to Covid.
He’s played 22 games as of late-February and scored his first collegiate goal Nov. 13 against Potsdam after garnering his first point two weeks prior versus Nazareth. He had seven points for the Knights, who entered the second round of the conference playoffs ranked third in the country.
“They are always making the games and usually watching two per weekend,” Tommy mentioned about his parents. “I was just kind of left out of the loop with my brothers playing together and I was the lone wolf playing by myself. But the age difference is off unlike the other two.”
And in spite of the age difference, he agrees with older brother Casey about who has the hockey bragging rights in the family.
“She’s (Haley) is at the top compared to all of us,” Tommy said. “She’s a stud and I could go on and on about her. Just look her up, Haley Winn.”
And you might potentially consider a fifth member of the family. Brockport defenseman Cory Tam, who is from Nepean, Ontario, has played with Casey as his defense partner for six seasons dating back to junior hockey.
“And we share the same birthday, so destined to be I guess,” Casey said.
(Photo by Clarkson University women’s hockey)
