Hello Warriors. It’s been a while since I have addressed the organization, and it seems like it’s time. If we hadn’t met, which seems likely with all the new faces, my name is Gabe “Pops” Zwilling. I proudly wear number 5 on the Gold team, formerly a member of Charlie, and Blue. I have been around since the second practice of the St. Louis Blues Warriors back in 2019.
I wanted to take the time to tell a few stories from my time in the organization to illustrate what the Warriors Can be. The organization seems to be trending more and more towards just another beer league. There is zero wrong with a beer league, I just know that we have been and can be more if we try. Maybe you don’t need the kind of group I’m about to tell you about and that’s ok too. Just give me a bit of your time and think on it. Please.
I am going to be deep and real with you all. I’ll leave names out where they don’t need to be but give recognition to the ones that do. Please don’t inquire about the missing names.
In the early days there were just a dozen or so of us showing up at Centene. Our former President or former VP would introduce you to the group and we skated. It was a haphazard mix of guys/gals that played their whole lives and guys/gals who opened their first box of skates at their first practice.
We grew slowly at first and we had the luxury within small groups to get to know each other a lot easier than it is now. I hope on my part to help bridge that over the next few months. For me personally this group of Shake and Bake (our first divisions split by skill/talent level) and then Alpha-Delta I gained a family that I didn’t even know I needed. I don’t use the word “family” as a cliche I mean it. Some of you are closer and more valuable to me than a lot of my blood relatives and lifelong/high school/work friends.
The main reason for this is that my civilian family and friends just don’t get me. If I am being honest, I don’t get them either. There are conversations had in Warrior locker rooms that could never be had in civilized society. Definitely not at the water cooler or the family reunion. For me, once I had been forced to retire from the AF and ANG just like the rest of you, I was dumped back into life as a civilian having no real idea what it meant to be one.
After just a few practices the Warriors were shut down due to COVID. This would have ended a lot of brand-new sports organizations before they even started, but not ours. We got even closer and realized what we had found in each other. We didn’t necessarily need to skate to keep it. We just had to keep talking to each other.
Deep part now to keep you reading. Since I have been here, I have been directly involved in three suicide events thankfully unsuccessful, assisted a brother in going to rehab and turning his life completely around. I have cried and held onto Warriors dealing with the suicides of their platoon mates.
That was not a Look-At-Me paragraph. I am telling you that amongst over a hundred of us over the past four plus years those are the most serious of events that I have been directly involved in. There have been countless tragedies and troubles when Warriors helped each other I know about, and I guarantee plenty I will never know about. This organization should not be about hockey in my opinion. It should be about being a lifeline and a brother and sister to your fellow veterans. You will never get that from your beer league.
Our former President had a vicious tornado rip up his home and his life. Most of the people who came to help him at least on the days I was there, were St. Louis Blues Warriors. We were there to save what could be saved, clean up the mess, fill the dumpsters and give his mind some ease. We even made sure he and his traumatized family (they were home when the tornado ripped the house from its foundation and turned it sideways raining glass and roof into the house) were able to go on vacation while cleanup continued.
Over the past year my in-laws passed away. My wife and I have had we’ll say a complicated relationship with my in-laws. Without getting into all that because I could write an actual book, I would say they left their affairs in a mess that we would be forced to figuratively and literally clean up. One summer day last year I found myself in their backyard that had not been mowed, trees trimmed, weeds cleared, in over four years.
Initially I thought my two teenage boys and me could handle it. I quickly found out I was sorely mistaken. I owned a chain saw, but I broke it the first time out of the box. I went to the main Warriors chat as that’s always my first place to go for help/advice before Facebook or Google. There is always a Warrior that “knows a guy.” I just asked if anyone happened to be in North County that could loan me a chainsaw.
I got a few bites to borrow chainsaws, but then I got a text from Aaron “Shelly” Schelhamer my former Charlie Captain, asking me what I really needed. It had been a few months since I had been cut from Charlie which was heartbreaking and another story, but it’s relevant for this one. I felt like I was no longer a part of that team and roster wise I was not. However, the group of friends I made on Charlie and ass kickings we went through together on the road before they became champions had bonded us past a roster. I just didn’t realize it yet. I felt like I was in high school and cut from the team so I couldn’t hang out with the jocks anymore. I know that sounds silly…until it happens to you.
Anyway, Shelly wanted to know what I really needed. It pained me like any other man to admit I was in over my head and needed help. A lot of help. My in-laws were hoarders and their house was disgusting. We were ashamed that due to our relationship with them we were not able to help them keep up with their house so to anyone who came there we would feel judged like “how did you not take care of your parents better?” However, Shelly has become a brother to me, and I wasn’t embarrassed to tell him how things really were.
I still didn’t want a bunch of people over there. I just wanted them to drop off their tools and me and my boys would work for pretty much forever I guess, on it ourselves. As I understand it once Billy Harshbarger heard the situation, he rounded up some of my former teammates, and Greg Burian, Mitch Martin, Shelly, and Billy showed up at my in-law’s house with tools and trailers. I was mortified, but so thankful. They spent two hot days altogether cutting down trees, clearing brush and trash, getting poison oak, cuts, and breaking Mitch’s woodchipper.
When it came time to clean all that up, Shelly asked what day was good for me. I had just started a new job and wasn’t sure I could get time off while I was still in training. Against my very direct instructions that no one would do work there without me also working there, Shelly got RJ Breen (Alpha) to bring over his industrial sized woodchipper and the gang came back over while I thought I’d be meeting them all there after work. They got rid of every last branch and swept that yard clean enough to eat off (if you’ve ever been out in the field and got hungry enough, you’d eat just about anything off the dirt—civilians don’t get that). All before I got off work. I didn’t have to lift a finger. I was livid at Shelly but so freaking thankful.
For some perspective, it was Billy that led the effort to improve Charlie by moving better players in and so some of us had to go. I fully admit I could not keep up with the new blood and we had tryouts, and it was fair. I no longer belonged on that team. Still hurt like hell. And I am ashamed to say I took it personally like Billy didn’t like me. And here Billy was spending two days of hard labor in the St. Louis summer heat to help someone “he didn’t like.” I had never spoken two words to RJ Breen and he also took time out of his busy work schedule and his company equipment to do hard labor for a guy he didn’t even know.
This is what the St. Louis Blues Warriors can be. Should be. I will happily owe these people forever. There is nothing I would not do for these guys and many of you. These are the people that can call at 2 AM to say they’re drunk and wrecked their car can I come get them. A few of us have gotten that call. Or “hey man I am so broke and need help,” to do…whatever. If you just show up to play hockey and leave you will never find what many of us have found.
One more example that’s a bit heavy. I promise I will try to be funnier in future communications, but I am serious about the direction of this club, so I am being serious for now. Otherwise, only the aforementioned Shelly will chirp at you on and off the ice more than me. I don’t care how much better or worse than me you are at hockey I am talking trash. I might be terrible at it but I am at least going to have fun.
Jared Schmitz was a young Marine from Wentzville killed in the Afghan pull out debacle. A large group of us took the day off to line up on the side of the road to welcome his body back home. Shouldn’t have been a big deal, raise a salute and go have a beer with the boys after. Only it was a big deal. Drew Boyd’s family was close to the Schmitz family. His kids went to school with Jared. I went to support him.
However, my cousin CPL Gunnar Zwilling was killed in the Battle of Wanat (look it up) in 2008. I had been at the airport to get his remains. I was in the limo with my uncle, his actual brother, and his closest platoon brothers. We all wished it had been us and not Gunnar. I was in the same procession we watched the Schmitz in. My family even had to go to the same funeral home in the exact vehicles used for both funerals.
These facts hit me like a truck. Watching something I had experienced from inside now from the outside was brutal. I knew exactly how the Schmitz family felt at that exact moment, the anger at the stupidity of the DoD to put their kid in that situation was exactly the bitter anger my family felt for the epic failure in common sense that caused the Battle of Wanat. I could barely drive to the bar we were meeting up at. I bit my lip to keep the tears at bay, but was in a Jeep with no doors and didn’t want people to see.
By the time we bellied up to the bar I was just barely hanging on and didn’t want to lose it in front of Warriors and non-warriors alike in public. I saddled up to the bar and put on an apparent obviously fake smile and laugh. Drew Boyd and Lee Brown (Alpha/Bravo) got right up next to me on either side and put their arms around me. Lee said, “fuck them man they don’t know…let it out.” And I did. And they held me up at that bar until I could it myself. As long as I live, I will never forget the kindness and brotherhood of that moment.
That’s what the St. Louis Blues Warriors Hockey Club can be. We hold each other up, bail each other out. We comfortably laugh at the things that would make civilians want to lock us up. We hang in the parking lots after games with beers or energy drinks and solve each other and the world’s problems. We are that call at 2AM and we make that call at 2AM. Happy, sad, new job, new spouse, new baby, death in the family…we share it.
If you roll in get dressed, play, and head home you’ll never get that. If you worry more about the trophy than what’s going on in your teammate’s life, you’re missing it man. I don’t know how else to say it.
If this is just another league for you that happens to be full of veterans, there is nothing wrong with that. I am not judging you and don’t know that anyone else will either. Maybe you have your life together and don’t need any of this touchy feely stuff. I envy you for real. I am not saying that in a smug way, I mean it. I just hope for those of you that do, you will try to be part of something bigger than just another beer league.
More to follow, and thanks for reading if you made it this far.
Pops out.
Jacked Up Dad 