ANCHORED IN HOCKEY: New outdoor rink 'a dream come true' in Westerville

It's called the Overseas Highway and its pavement stretches across the Florida Keys about 100 miles into the Atlantic Ocean, from Key Largo to Key West.
The drive takes you past places like Islamorada, Long Key, Marathon and the Saddlebunch Keys - and at the end of the line, in Key West, sits the inspiration for an outdoor street-hockey rink that will soon anchor Alum Creek Park South in Westerville.
It's called Southernmost Hockey Rink, located a few slap shots from Key West High School, along Atlantic Blvd., and it's where Thomas Knox loved to play hockey on Spring Break vacations with his parents, Jim and Lisa.
"We would go to Key West during Spring Break and he would spend a lot of hours over at the roller-hockey rink, especially when he would bring a buddy," said Jim Knox, whose idea to bring a similar rink to Westerville was rooted in honoring Thomas, who died more than two years ago, at age 14, after playing a hockey game. "I was heading home from Uptown Westerville and I was like, 'What can we do? What can we do different?' I got home and the thought of Key West came to my mind."

Key West.
That's where Thomas Knox would strap on his rollerblades and just zip around the concrete at 'Southernmost' for hours, honing his hockey skills and catching a breeze off the Atlantic Ocean nearby. It was a place where Thomas was happy, where he enjoyed a warm afternoon playing a sport he'd fallen in love with as a 6-year old, playing mini-sticks with his older brother and learning how to skate at the Chiller North.
Jim, a retired vice president of global operations for Worthington Industries, knew the price for such a project would run well into the six digits, possibly up to $250,000, and a number like that might make his wife balk at the idea.
He didn't let that stop him. He floated it to her anyway, to see what she thought, and Lisa quickly added her own spin - suggesting Alum Creek Park South, which also has a BMX course that Thomas enjoyed.
"I thought of the perfect park to put it in, because Thomas spent time there and there's a lot of land there," she said. "I said, 'I know exactly where we could ask the city to put it.'"
That was all it took to get the wheels in motion.
Through a friend, the Knoxes arranged a meeting with Randy Auler, director of Westerville Parks and Recreation, and after some convincing, the Thomas J. Knox Rink project was launched. It was the beginning of a journey that's taken two years and a lot of dedication, not to mention a lot of funds from the Knoxes' own bank account, but their dream will become reality Saturday.
The rink in their son's honor will officially open with a day-long celebration of Thomas' life and hockey, the sport he loved most.
"It's a dream come true," said Jim, who has monitored the rink's construction from start to finish, snapping pictures once a week. "At the end of the day, the breadth and scope of what the city is doing to make it successful, it's exceeded even my expectations."

ABOUT THE RINK
Thomas' older brother, Justin, also played hockey. In fact, it was Justin's games where Thomas began to love the sport.
Justin also played street hockey in Westerville, as part of a former program in Huff Park that was makeshift in nature. As Jim remembers it, "They'd take bumper pads out of a big shed and make up a little rink in the parking lot."
What's about to open in Westerville is quite different.
This is a full hockey rink, complete with dasher boards, player benches, a penalty box and bleachers. There's an asphalt base, and on top is a smooth, blue Acrylic surface that's perfect for playing hockey in rollerblades or gym shoes.
The Blue Jackets, whose CBJ Foundation contributed $25,000 toward construction of bleachers, rink dividers and a scoreboard, have dual logos on the playing surface along with those for the City of Westerville and Westerville Parks Foundation.
The "center ice" logo is a large replica of the helmet-sticker design St. Charles players wore to honor Thomas.
The centerpiece is a red anchor with the initials "TK" on each side, in blue lettering. The Latin phrase "familia supra omnia" scrolls across the bottom, meaning "family over everything" - fitting for a facility built to give families the same joy the Knoxes found in hockey.
As Jim predicted, the final cost topped $250,000, funded privately through donations that included a sizeable gift from the McConnell Foundation. The Knox family also poured their own money into the project, which has a lot of bells and whistles and plans for a "Phase II" to put an open-air roof over the rink.
There's also a plaque commemorating Thomas' life, which is displayed on a rock along the path to the rink - which will host outdoor hockey programs, leagues and open roller blading/skating.
"It is going to be a premier rink out of any other outdoor rinks," said Auler, whose department will cover the maintenance costs and run the programs. "This is not just about Westerville. We built this rink to be a premier facility and to really serve as many people as we can. We want to have people playing hockey and growing the sport."

WHO WAS THOMAS KNOX?
The youngest of Jim and Lisa's three kids, Thomas was the baby of the family.
He had a smile that outsized his slender body, which at the time he died - a month before his 15th birthday - measured 5-foot-2 after a growth spurt. After attending schools in Westerville growing up, he attended St. Charles Prep as a high-school freshman, an all-boys school located off Broad St in Columbus.
He loved the supportive vibe there and made friends in both the classroom and ice rink. That's where "familia supra omnia," was rooted, within the walls of his school, where Thomas felt comfortable, welcome and part of the family.
"Thomas was a small boy, small structured, and he got picked-on a little bit and made fun of," said Lisa, who noticed that start to change at St. Charles. "He wasn't bullied or anything, but when he went to St. Charles there really wasn't any of that. It was a very inclusive environment and Thomas flourished."
Hockey played a role in that, as Thomas centered a line on the JV team and made fast friends with a number of varsity players.
"He was known for his fist bumps," Lisa said, sharing a memory from Thomas' friends. "A lot of times, the JV team would be at the varsity's games, and I guess Thomas would stand at the locker room door and give everybody a fist bump. Or, when he'd see them at school, it was always a fist bump."
They were called, "Knox Knuckles."
Familia supra omnia. Family over everything.
This coming school year, Thomas would be a senior at St. Charles and likely a key player for the varsity. He made up for his lack of size with skating and a high hockey IQ, an knew exactly where to be on the ice. He also had the willingness to get there, even in the most punishing areas.
That's no surprise, considering his favorite Blue Jackets were captain Nick Foligno and Jody Shelley, who's now the Jackets' TV analyst. Jim and Thomas got matching Foligno jerseys during the 2015 NHL All-Star weekend in Columbus - and had the captain sign both - and Thomas revered Shelley after the retired Jackets enforcer talked to his team before a game at Nationwide Arena.
"In the latter years, when he played on the big ice, Jody Shelley came to the locker room, talking to the boys, giving them high-fives, so that inspired him a lot," Jim said. "It goes to show how important those 30 seconds or 40 seconds are, and what it means to little kids and their development."
It meant motivation for Thomas, who charged ahead with his hockey career regardless of his size.
"He was a great skater," Jim said. "He wasn't a puck-handler, but he found his way to the net. What we learned from the coaches was [that] he was one of the more knowledgeable players, as far as retaining what they were telling him. They called it 'hockey smart.' He knew where to be."
He knew how to score, too.
On the last night of his life, Thomas scored two goals at a tournament in Dublin, which were the first and only goals of his high-school career. Afterward, he went home and stayed up later than usual, talking and laughing with his family.
He turned in for the night and never woke up. A heart condition caused it to stop beating, in his sleep, and his death stunned everybody who knew him.
'ANCHOR TIE MONDAY'
Classmates from St. Charles, who attended the funeral, all wore anchor ties, which was a nod to the tradition Thomas helped start at the school - which requires ties as part of the dress code.
He and a couple friends began wearing pink shirts and anchor ties on Mondays, calling the ritual, "Anchor Tie Monday," and convinced others to follow suit. He even convinced then-junior center Connor Kannally to play along. Kannally noticed Thomas' anchor tie before practice one day, as they sat inside the Tim Horton's coffee shop next to the OhioHealth Ice Haus, and pointed it out.
"He said, 'Thomas, I have that same anchor tie!'" Lisa said, smiling. "Thomas said, 'Connor, you have to wear it every Monday. Monday is 'Anchor Tie Monday.' So, Connor started wearing an anchor tie on Mondays."
Following his death, it was Kannally who designed the helmet sticker, sitting in an English class. Sketching on a piece of paper, he thought of Thomas and the anchor, a symbol of stability and strength that is also commonly-used in the Christian religion.
"I was just kind of thinking of something I could do for Thomas," said Kannally, who will be a sophomore at Ohio State in the Fall. "I know stickers have been done in the past, but I kind of wanted to put Thomas' own twist on it, instead of just using his initials on the sticker. So, I wanted to make sure his name was on there or his initials, and kind of a message. So that 'familia supra omnia,' family over everything ... I thought that was pretty relevant to the St. Charles hockey community, because we were all pretty tight."
And then there's the anchor.
"He always talked about wearing the anchor tie, but I thought that was pretty cool because an anchor is a symbol for having good roots and faith, and being a great a good person," Kannally said. "So, I actually just drew a picture. I sketched it by hand, just on notebook paper with a pencil when I was sitting in class."
He drew a couple versions and showed them to some guys on the team. They picked one, took it to a design company owned by the family of a former St. Charles hockey player and soon had stickers memorializing Thomas Knox on all of their helmets.
"They sort of made it official and started making the stickers," Kannally said. "I don't really like to take full credit for it. I definitely had some help with it."
That anchor, flanked by Thomas' initials and bearing his number, is now the main logo of a pristine new rinkIt in Knox's hometown of Westerville.
"It's pretty cool to see it out there," said Kannally, who still wears his anchor tie whenever the need for a tie arises. "I was not expecting it to be out there when I heard about this rink being made. It's massive. It's awesome."
The sticker versions were popular too. After seeing them on St. Charles helmets, other teams in the Columbus area also wanted them, to show support. Look closely at one of the local ice rinks, even now, and you might find one.
The Knoxes still do.
"It really has grown into something that's associated with Thomas," Lisa said. "We still see them today, all around town, at all the Chillers."
The anchor even made its way into a tournament in Cleveland once.
"I have no idea how they got up there," Jim said. "Somebody sent us a picture. That's how amazing the hockey world is."

A DAY OF HOCKEY
The new outdoor rink at Alum Creek Park South, located at 535 Park Meadow Road, will officially open with a dedication and grand opening Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., free and open to the public. The dedication ceremony itself will begin at 11:30 a.m., followed at Noon by a series of 60-minute clinics run by the Blue Jackets' Fan Development staff, as part of "Try Hockey For Free Day."
The clinics will introduce the game to boys and girls ages 6-14, with equipment provided, and there will also be food carts and an appearance by Stinger, the Blue Jackets' mascot. As of Tuesday, 360 kids had signed up for the clinics, with another 125 registered for "Skills and Drills" sessions.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE RINK'S GRAND OPENING
There will also be a brief exhibition game played prior to the ribbon cutting, featuring some of Thomas' former teammates.
"By them playing, the kids that are younger can look at that and say, 'Oh yeah, I want to do that,'" Auler said. "That's really what we're trying to do. Part of our vision is being able to feed into the ice rinks. We will not compete with the Chiller rinks. We want to help feed the Chiller rinks and get kids into the ice hockey side, so we see this as a feeder system."
The rink will also host a high-school league and hold open-skating for people of all ages.
"We just have a really big vision for this," Auler said. "I'm just so proud that we're able to pull this together for Thomas, and his memory, and also to pay it forward for people to learn how to play and to really grow the sport of hockey in Columbus."
That kind of enthusiasm is exactly what Jim and Lisa Knox hoped to generate with their idea, with their son's memory getting a boost out of every wrist shot and every wheel that glides across the rink.
"Randy [Auler] and the City of Westerville, they have completely exceeded our expectations," Lisa said. "The efforts they're putting into this and the structure they're putting around it, they're just doing an amazing job. That's going to be key, because that's the foundation, right? You can build a rink like this, and hope people show up, but when you have programs and you're bringing people together …"
Well, that's the biggest reason this is happening.
It's what Thomas found in the sport of hockey, including those vacations to Key West.
"It's creating a place where kids can come together and hopefully improve their skills and develop a passion for something that our son had a passion for," Lisa said. "We hope to be able to spread the word about just being kind to each other. Come here, hang out, make some new friends and just ... love the game of hockey."
Thomas Knox did that down in Key West, happily spending his Spring Break afternoons with a stick in his hands and wheels on his feet. Now, thanks to a rink bearing his name, kids from Central Ohio can do the same.
Anchors away.