among the many, many friends who congratulated Melanie Berry on being named this year’s Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and Pittsburgh Penguins Hockey Mom of the Year, one summed it up best by posting on Facebook, “You’ve kept it all together through everything!”
Hockey moms know that’s what hockey moms do, as they shuttle their players to and from practices and games, to the hockey store and the fast-food drive-through and medical express, often while raising other kids and running households and working other jobs and dealing with everything else that the fast-paced games of hockey and life bring at them.
Ms. Berry, of Baldwin Borough, has had to deal with a bit more than some. Especially this past season.
She’s a hockey mom from way back. Her first-born, Teegan, used to watch hockey with her husband, Tim, and bounce excitedly in his bouncer. He was skating by the time he was 4 and playing at 5. He’s 13.
“So 8 years? Wow” she says about how long she’s been a “hockey mom.”
“It’s a term I wear proudly,” she says. “I LOVE hockey.”
Her other player, Kaden, is 10. Her daughter, Kylee, 7, does her own things, but like a lot of hockey siblings, she spends a fair amount of time at the rinks, too.
Her Mom has been “all in, gung ho” for the last three years, helping the business manager on Teegan’s South Hills Amateur Hockey Association Panthers team by running its fundraising and finances, as well as organizing team dinners and T-shirt orders and support and sympathy cards and gifts. This while working full-time as a civil engineer who inspects bridges and doing non-hockey mom things such as volunteering at her children’s schools.
She barely missed a beat when, in 2019, she volunteered to donate part of her liver to her husband’s uncle. She wasn’t a match but she donated anyway, for another patient whose donor was a match for her family, and so they did a rare swap that saved two lives.
Then in 2020, Ms. Berry had her own medical crisis, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. But even during chemotherapy, with her oncologist’s blessings because he knows how important it is to her, she showed up at hockey games, practices and gatherings. Even during COVID-19 crisis, she was responsive to the hockey team’s needs, says business manager Alan Volek, who calls his friend “a true inspiration to all.”
“I just always wanted it not to impact — sorry.” She fights off a cry. “I never wanted it to affect the kids’ lives.” She knows that to a big extent it did.
But there she was, post-mastectomy and with short hair and no wig, organizing and helping to run the year-end bowling party for Teegan and the rest of the team, which — disclosure — includes my son and Mr. Volek’s son and a dozen other teens. So she’s their hockey mom, too.
“We tell everybody our hockey family is like our second family,” she says.
Another mom on Teegan’s team, Lisa Lyons, nominated her for this fifth-annual recognition. Realty executive and hockey dad Todd Van Horn started it six years ago because he knew that while his goalie son’s coaches got a lot of credit, a lot of the work was being done by the moms. He called the Pittsburgh Penguins to ask for tickets to give as part of the prize, and the Pens wound up teaming up with the program.
This COVID-curtailed season, Mr. Van Horn — Berkshire Hathaway’s vice president of career development — worked with a panel of judges to pick hockey moms of the months of February (Kylie Bryner of Fayette Area Youth Hockey Association), March (Julie Sharbaugh of Indiana Youth Hockey Association), April (Ms. Berry) and late April (Lora Clewes of Beaver County Ice Sharks Special Hockey).
“The thing they all have in common, they’re all selfless,” says Mr. Van Horn. “It’s not about them. It’s about the kids.”
But Ms. Berry’s generosity and “unwavering perseverance” in the face of her own personal hardship wowwed the judges and him.
In a long interview he did and edited to post online — “I told him, ‘You did a really good job at cutting all my ugly crying,” she quips — she said her inspiration is her own mother. Crafton’s Donna Mills was a stay-at-home daughter raising 7-year-old Melanie and her 12- and 3-year-old sisters when the girls’ dad went to work one day, died of a heart ailment and never came home. His widow went back to school, went to work and raised her family. She’s also battled breast cancer and more.
“I don’t know how she did it,” her middle daughter says. “She’s always been the strongest person I know.”
Of course, her Mom and her sisters are among those who were thrilled when she was named Hockey Mom of the Year. They couldn’t join her at the Penguins’ second-to-last home game at PPG Paints Arena, but 19 other family members and friends including Lisa Lyons did, in a suite, with food and drink, and that was just part of her prize. She also received a $1,000 donation to her hockey team, a Penguins jersey with her name on the back and a commemorative plaque, plus recognition on the arena’s hockey moms wall. A photo of her is there, under the question, “The only thing tougher than a hockey player?” The answer is her and the other four moms, for the current playoff run and beyond.
Melanie Berry LOVES it.
But what she cherishes most about this recognition that she never expected is hearing the affirmation from all the friends and hockey families whose lives she’s touched and vice-versa. And she looks forward to keeping that going. As hockey moms do.
“It’s been a rough ride,” she says, without any kind of non-positive pause. “Hopefully we’re on an upswing for the long term.”
Bob Batz Jr.: bbatz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1930 and on Twitter @bobbatzjr.
First Published: May 16, 2021, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: May 16, 2021, 10:29 a.m.
