WORKING MEN
As Part 1 of a season-long series celebrating the organization’s 20th anniversary, Griffiti caught up with a hat trick of former Griffins now making their marks in other professions.
Stories by Mark Newman
DANTON COLE: ALL-AMERICAN MENTOR
As a player, Danton Cole may not have been a star, but there were few who could top his intensity. That’s how the former sixth-round draft pick parlayed modest skills into a 10-year pro career that included 318 NHL games and a Stanley Cup with the 1995 New Jersey Devils.
When Cole entered the coaching ranks, first as an assistant with the Grand Rapids Griffins (1999-01) and later as a head coach of the Muskegon Fury (2001-02) and Griffins (2002-05), he brought the same passion for the game that made him excel as a player.
After a year as an assistant coach at Bowling Green State University, Cole spent three seasons (2007-10) as the head coach of the University of Alabama-Huntsville Chargers, the only NCAA Division I men’s ice hockey program located in the South, where he shared his enthusiasm with college players eager to improve.
Cole got his first international coaching opportunity when he served as an assistant coach for the U.S. Under-18 Select Team at the 2009 Ivan Hlinka Memorial Cup. “I had been a member of three US. Men’s National Teams (1990, 1991, 1994), but coaching at that level was a new experience,” said Cole, who was “intrigued” by the prospect of coaching teenagers full-time. “I really liked the experience.”
When Alabama-Huntsville found itself without a conference following the 2009-10 season, he began to consider pursuing a larger role with USA Hockey. “The more I explored, the more I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to work with some great kids and a great organization like USA Hockey,” he said.
Cole is now in his sixth season as a head coach within USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program (NTDP). He is guiding the U.S. National Under-18 Team in 2015-16 and was recently named an assistant coach for the U.S. National Junior Team that will compete in the 2016 International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) World Junior Championship in Helsinki, Finland.
“It’s a fun place to coach,” Cole said. “We get to coach against teams from junior hockey and college as well as international teams. The kids are outstanding. Their level of talent and abilities make the job a lot of fun, and it’s neat to see how much they grow and move forward in two years.”
Cole has led the Under-18 Team to a pair of gold medals at the IIHF Men’s Under-18 World Championship (2012, 2014), in addition to five other first-place finishes in international competition.
Launched in 1996 as a revolutionary new initiative, the NTDP is a full-time development program that is designed to prepare student athletes under the age of 18 for participation on U.S. National Teams and success in their future hockey careers.
Along with Don Granato, the other head coach in the program, Cole is responsible for developing the future stars of USA Hockey, making sure that the young men in the program excel not only during high-caliber participation on the ice but also in becoming well-rounded individuals off the ice. While enrolled in the NTDP, most players stay with billet families and attend Pioneer High School.
“The program is all-inclusive,” Cole said. “These are young men who are very moldable, so we spend an incredible amount of time on things beyond hockey. Whether it’s a leadership class, life skills or just the experience of traveling internationally, it’s important that they understand the message that we convey as mentors, coaches and leaders.”
Since the NTDP’s inception, the U.S. has won the gold medal at the IIHF World Men’s Under-18 Championship nine times, winning with a roster comprised primarily of NTDP players. Cole said 16 players from his first U.S. National team have signed NHL contracts.
“Recognizing their age and maturity, we do things as close to NHL-level as possible,” Cole said. “The program functions as a front porch for USA Hockey, and I think it’s done a good job of preparing players to represent the U.S. in various tournaments.”
An example of a recent graduate of the NTDP is Dylan Larkin, the highly touted prospect who was selected in the first round (15th overall) by the Detroit Red Wings in the 2014 NHL Draft and who showed signs of future greatness during the Griffins’ Calder Cup playoff run last season.
“If you talk to anyone around the program, you will hear that everyone has a lot of respect for Dylan, just because of the way he approached things here, how hard he worked and how much better he got, which is a tribute to the time he put in here,” Cole said of Larkin, who spent two years in the program before his freshman year at the University of Michigan.
Cole is looking forward to his participation in the 2016 World Junior Championship tournament. He got his first look at the potential team during a camp in August. The group will reconvene in mid-December and stick together until the end of the tournament in early January.
“I’ve been through it a few times and things go fast,” he said. “You have to take care of the game you’re playing. In a way, it’s like the NCAA basketball tournament. You survive and move on. If things go wrong, it can get away from you rather quickly.”
Seeing many of his past players compete on a world stage should be an eye-opening experience. “You find out a lot about them during the course of a tournament,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure on these young men. You never know until you get there, but I think we have a good group. It certainly should be fun.”
Cole is looking forward to serving as an assistant coach with Chris Chelios under head coach Ron Wilson. In the past, Cole has crossed coaching paths with a number of former Griffins, including John Gruden and Kelly Miller. Jake Visser, who was the assistant equipment manager in Grand Rapids for three seasons (2007-10), is in his fifth year with NTDP.
“It’s amazing how many guys I see who I either played with or against or coached,” Cole said. “It’s great to see so many guys continuing in the hockey business.”
Based in Ann Arbor since its inception in 1996, the program moved into the old Compuware Arena in Plymouth this fall. The facility, which has been renamed USA Hockey Arena, is being renovated with new locker rooms, a weight room and offices in the works.
After moving more times than he can count due to all the places he played and coached, Cole has been happy to stay in one place with his wife, Debbie, and their three daughters, Ashton, Madeleine and Payton.
With his youngest daughter now a junior in high school, though, Cole admits that he has begun to think about his future, whether it’s staying with USA Hockey or moving to a new opportunity in the pros or college ranks.
“I love where I’m at, so there’s no hurry,” Cole said. “The people here are outstanding. They give us the tools and the freedom to do the job we’re tasked with, which is developing and molding these kids into good hockey players and fine young men. As a coach, it’s all you can ask for.”
JED FIEBELKORN: FLY FISHING EXPERT
Jed Fiebelkorn grew up in Minnesota, the so-called “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” For a boy who grew up to love hockey and fishing, there could hardly have been a more perfect place.
“My dad was a big fisherman,” he recalled. “I got a fly rod when I was fairly young and didn’t know much about fly fishing, but we spent summers at a cabin near the boundary waters of Lake Superior and the Gunflint Trail, and it was there that I got my first taste of trout.”
Northern Minnesota was the type of place that could make an avid outdoorsman out of almost anyone. “It was pretty, rugged, remote, off the grid,” said Fiebelkorn, noting that his grandfather had bought the cabin from a trapper. “No power, no water, but a wild and amazing place for a kid to discover the outdoors.”
Fiebelkorn would grow up and play hockey at the University of Minnesota, where Travis Richards was his teammate for two seasons. Richards, of course, would eventually play 655 games in a Griffins uniform, or 650 more than the number that Fiebelkorn played during his one season (1998-99) in Grand Rapids.
It was just long enough to make an impression on Fiebelkorn, who played professionally for five seasons until a knee injury prematurely ended his career. He remembers the city as being “a super cool town.”
“The thing I remember most about Grand Rapids was the environment there,” said Fiebelkorn, recalling that he joined the Griffins right before the holidays that winter. “It was just a warm, inviting place to play.”
He recalled that the city was hit by a huge snowstorm during his stay, which might not seem that memorable for a Minnesota native, except Fiebelkorn joined the Griffins from the ECHL expansion team in South Florida known as the Miami Matadors.
Actually, Fiebelkorn was already familiar with West Michigan, having played the previous season in Kalamazoo for the Michigan K-Wings. His teammates there included a pair of future Griffins: Aris Brimanis and John Emmons.
Following his brief stint in Grand Rapids, Fiebelkorn decided to go to Germany to play, but he appeared in only 22 games before he wrecked his knee. “I figured I was going to play a few more years in Europe, but when my career ended, I had to figure out what was next.”
Having studied psychology as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, Fiebelkorn figured he would pursue sports psychology. “I was drawn to the mental side of performing and when I looked at schools with programs, there was the University of Montana,” he said.
The idea of attending graduate school in Big Sky Country was just too good for Fiebelkorn to pass up.
He had become acquainted with the West after an uncle and cousin moved to Colorado when he was a boy. “As I got older, my cousin started fly fishing for trout in the rivers out there, so I started visiting him regularly,” he said. “I began to venture out to places like the Green River in Utah and, eventually, to the famed rivers of Montana.”
In Montana, Fiebelkorn saw a unique opportunity.
“I knew the guiding game a bit from my cousin, so I figured I could run a few trips and make a few extra bucks while I was going to graduate school,” he said. “My wife (Shannon) loved the area, too, so when I finished my master’s degree, we just decided to stay.”
And thus, Endless Drift Outfitters was born.
Fiebelkorn has been a full-time guide in western Montana for the better part of a decade, taking anglers of all types – “from raw beginners to people who have fished all over the world” – to his adopted state’s blue ribbon trout streams, including the Blackfoot River, Bitterroot River, Clark Fork River, the Missouri and Rock Creek.
A few years ago, Fiebelkorn was approached to host a fly fishing show for television. He co-hosted an instructional show called “Fly Fisherman” for two seasons, then hosted another show, “Trout Unlimited: On The Rise,” on his own for two more.
“I was never the guy who loved the camera or the spotlight, but when they flipped on the camera, I didn’t have much of a problem with it,” he said. “I think it’s because the teaching aspect came naturally to me. I just did my thing and it worked out.”
Fiebelkorn loves sharing his passion for the sport of fly fishing. In fact, he teaches two courses on the fundamentals of fly fishing at the University of Montana.
“One of my passions is to fish new water, and you can always fish different species, different areas and different parts of the world. You’re constantly learning new intricacies of rivers and bug life and hatches. One thing that I truly love about the sport is that you can continue to learn and get better. It’s a lifelong endeavor.”
The television shows allowed Fiebelkorn to travel to some of the world’s most beautiful fly fishing destinations, even going as far as the Patagonia region of Chile. Cuba, Mongolia and Kamchatka are a few of the places still on his bucket list.
“I’m keeping my eyes open for new projects,” he said. “If the opportunity arises and I can tie hosting together with writing and field producing, I would definitely be interested.”
He’s hoping to grow his outfitting business beyond the borders of Montana. He has hosted several trips to the Florida Keys, where his wife’s family spends a lot of time, and he’s trying to develop trips to the Bahamas and Alaska. “There’s an adage that trout don’t live in ugly places; they live in beautiful places. And the sport of fly fishing takes you to amazingly beautiful places.”
In the meantime, he’s content spending more time with his two boys, Oden, 8, and Hatcher, 5.
“I’ve introduced them to the outdoors, and we’ve obviously spent a lot of time on the rivers, the streams and the wilderness of Montana,” he said. “I’m just trying to get them out there and allowing them to have fun. They’re not double-hauling 100 feet of line yet, but they’re on their way to becoming fly fishermen.”
Fiebelkorn misses playing hockey and the joys of being on a team, but he has no regrets.
“I’m doing exactly what I always wanted to do,” he said. “I’m not making millions and millions of dollars, but I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else anywhere else. It’s all about the lifestyle and Montana is it for me.”
CHRIS BALA: BOARDING SCHOOL AMBASSADOR
Chris Bala has good memories of playing for the Griffins.
“I look back very fondly on Grand Rapids because it was my first season as a pro,” said Bala, a second-round draft pick of the Ottawa Senators who made his pro debut with the Griffins during the 2001-02 season after graduating from Harvard University.
“I was a wide-eyed kid, naive as could be,” Bala said, noting he was one of the few rookies on a team filled with veterans like Kip Miller, Travis Richards, John Gruden and James Black, all of whom were age 31 or older. “To be honest, I had no clue, no sense of what was up from down.”
Bala remembers a moment early in his first season where head coach Bruce “Butch” Cassidy scheduled an optional skate after a couple of rough games.
“I took him at his word; to me, optional meant optional. I thought, ‘This is pretty cool,’” Bala recalled. “So I slept in the next morning, had breakfast and when I showed up at 5 o’clock for the next day’s game, I immediately knew something was wrong.
“I found out I was the only one not to go. Everybody had been there. I wasn’t trying to be a big wheel or do anything of the sort. In my mind, I took the ‘option’ and in a veteran-laden room, you can imagine, it didn’t go over very well. The guys gave me some serious heat.”
Bala remembers having a sit-down with Cassidy around Thanksgiving that season, a “hey kid, when are you going to figure it out” meeting that may have been his awakening, along with the opportunity to play on the same line with Miller.
Blessed with speed, Bala blossomed under Miller’s wing, scoring 21 goals that season, which tied for second-best on the team next to the 22 tallied by Petr Schastlivy.
“When I look back, the success I had in Grand Rapids might not have been the best thing for me,” he said. “I think I might have gotten pigeonholed as a scorer, and I’m not totally positive that was the best label to bear.”
Bala played six NHL games with the Senators during his rookie campaign, but he spent all of the next season in Binghamton when Ottawa moved its affiliation to upstate New York and the Griffins began their affiliation with the Detroit Red Wings.
He eventually was dealt to the Minnesota Wild and played for Todd McLellan in Houston before bouncing around the AHL for a couple of years with Hershey and Milwaukee. He finished his career with the ECHL’s Reading Royals in 2009.
Once he qualified as a veteran, Bala knew his days were numbered. Not wanting to pursue playing in Europe, he decided to call it a career rather than play out the string.
“I probably could have played a couple of more years, but I walked away from the game on my own volition,” Bala said. “It was not an easy decision but one that I remain comfortable with to this day. I have no regrets.”
Bala considered pursuing a job on Wall Street but decided the financial world was not his thing. He eventually found his way back to The Hill, the private boarding school in Pennsylvania he had once attended.
Today, Bala is the school’s associate director of admissions and director of financial aid, as well as its hockey coach.
“I don’t mean to be corny or cliche, but my time at Hill changed my life,” said Bala, who joined The Hill staff in 2007 and lives in a dormitory on campus with his wife Katie, an elementary school teacher, and their three children, Joshua, 9; Jackson, 7; and Gianna, 3.
Bala decided to attend Hill after he was selected at age 17 to play for a U.S. National Team at a tournament in Japan.
“Colleges started calling and because I had decent grades and scores, there was some Ivy League interest,” Bala said. “At that time, prep schools were seen as a yellow brick road to college, and I was drawn to The Hill by their coach.”
John Micheletto, now coaching at UMass-Amherst after stints at Vermont, Notre Dame and Union College, was considered one of the best young coaches in the prep ranks. “Nothing against my high school at the time, but I figured if I was going to end up matriculating at an Ivy League institution or a good college, I wanted a different setting.”
Academics aside, Hill helped Bala with his confidence. He served as class president before heading to Harvard where he earned a B.A. in government.
“I felt like I became a different person,” Bala said. “A school like ours places so much responsibility on kids that they’re forced in a good way to step up and be accountable to high expectations. We talk about positive peer pressure, and I very much got swept up in the rising tide. My experience at Hill was crucial to who I became.
“It was a really special two years of my life.”
Founded in 1851, The Hill School offers a liberal arts curriculum that challenges its students to “work hard; think and reason; be fulfilled; serve the common good; and be prepared to lead as citizens of the world.” Patrick Rissmiller, who played for the Griffins during the 2009-10 season, also went to Hill before attending Holy Cross College.
Although Hill was an all-boys school when Bala attended, it is now co-ed with 502 students from 28 states and 27 countries. “We want our students to become critical thinkers, so we still stress the written word and the importance of becoming effective communicators,” Bala said.
To combat the image of the ivory tower of some boarding schools, he notes that the admission office makes a concerted effort to address socio-economic diversity. It helps that the school is located in the middle of blue-collar Pottstown and offers community service initiatives.
“We’re not a school with 500 kids with straight A’s, and not all of our kids come from families who can afford $55,000 for tuition,” said Bala, noting that 40 percent of the student body receive some sort of financial aid.
The Hill School has been a great place for Bala and his wife to raise their three kids. Both boys play hockey, and Bala has a constant reminder of his time in Grand Rapids. A framed photo of Van Andel Arena hangs over his older son’s bed.
“In some ways, my job is 24/7. There’s no line between my personal and professional life, but I have the ability to have a career and be a full-time dad and husband at the same time,” Bala said. “At the end of the day, I really love what I do.”
As Part 1 of a season-long series celebrating the organization’s 20th anniversary, Griffiti caught up with a hat trick of former Griffins now making their marks in other professions.
Stories by Mark Newman
DANTON COLE: ALL-AMERICAN MENTOR
As a player, Danton Cole may not have been a star, but there were few who could top his intensity. That’s how the former sixth-round draft pick parlayed modest skills into a 10-year pro career that included 318 NHL games and a Stanley Cup with the 1995 New Jersey Devils.
When Cole entered the coaching ranks, first as an assistant with the Grand Rapids Griffins (1999-01) and later as a head coach of the Muskegon Fury (2001-02) and Griffins (2002-05), he brought the same passion for the game that made him excel as a player.
After a year as an assistant coach at Bowling Green State University, Cole spent three seasons (2007-10) as the head coach of the University of Alabama-Huntsville Chargers, the only NCAA Division I men’s ice hockey program located in the South, where he shared his enthusiasm with college players eager to improve.
Cole got his first international coaching opportunity when he served as an assistant coach for the U.S. Under-18 Select Team at the 2009 Ivan Hlinka Memorial Cup. “I had been a member of three US. Men’s National Teams (1990, 1991, 1994), but coaching at that level was a new experience,” said Cole, who was “intrigued” by the prospect of coaching teenagers full-time. “I really liked the experience.”
When Alabama-Huntsville found itself without a conference following the 2009-10 season, he began to consider pursuing a larger role with USA Hockey. “The more I explored, the more I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to work with some great kids and a great organization like USA Hockey,” he said.
Cole is now in his sixth season as a head coach within USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program (NTDP). He is guiding the U.S. National Under-18 Team in 2015-16 and was recently named an assistant coach for the U.S. National Junior Team that will compete in the 2016 International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) World Junior Championship in Helsinki, Finland.
“It’s a fun place to coach,” Cole said. “We get to coach against teams from junior hockey and college as well as international teams. The kids are outstanding. Their level of talent and abilities make the job a lot of fun, and it’s neat to see how much they grow and move forward in two years.”
Cole has led the Under-18 Team to a pair of gold medals at the IIHF Men’s Under-18 World Championship (2012, 2014), in addition to five other first-place finishes in international competition.
Launched in 1996 as a revolutionary new initiative, the NTDP is a full-time development program that is designed to prepare student athletes under the age of 18 for participation on U.S. National Teams and success in their future hockey careers.
Along with Don Granato, the other head coach in the program, Cole is responsible for developing the future stars of USA Hockey, making sure that the young men in the program excel not only during high-caliber participation on the ice but also in becoming well-rounded individuals off the ice. While enrolled in the NTDP, most players stay with billet families and attend Pioneer High School.
“The program is all-inclusive,” Cole said. “These are young men who are very moldable, so we spend an incredible amount of time on things beyond hockey. Whether it’s a leadership class, life skills or just the experience of traveling internationally, it’s important that they understand the message that we convey as mentors, coaches and leaders.”
Since the NTDP’s inception, the U.S. has won the gold medal at the IIHF World Men’s Under-18 Championship nine times, winning with a roster comprised primarily of NTDP players. Cole said 16 players from his first U.S. National team have signed NHL contracts.
“Recognizing their age and maturity, we do things as close to NHL-level as possible,” Cole said. “The program functions as a front porch for USA Hockey, and I think it’s done a good job of preparing players to represent the U.S. in various tournaments.”
An example of a recent graduate of the NTDP is Dylan Larkin, the highly touted prospect who was selected in the first round (15th overall) by the Detroit Red Wings in the 2014 NHL Draft and who showed signs of future greatness during the Griffins’ Calder Cup playoff run last season.
“If you talk to anyone around the program, you will hear that everyone has a lot of respect for Dylan, just because of the way he approached things here, how hard he worked and how much better he got, which is a tribute to the time he put in here,” Cole said of Larkin, who spent two years in the program before his freshman year at the University of Michigan.
Cole is looking forward to his participation in the 2016 World Junior Championship tournament. He got his first look at the potential team during a camp in August. The group will reconvene in mid-December and stick together until the end of the tournament in early January.
“I’ve been through it a few times and things go fast,” he said. “You have to take care of the game you’re playing. In a way, it’s like the NCAA basketball tournament. You survive and move on. If things go wrong, it can get away from you rather quickly.”
Seeing many of his past players compete on a world stage should be an eye-opening experience. “You find out a lot about them during the course of a tournament,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure on these young men. You never know until you get there, but I think we have a good group. It certainly should be fun.”
Cole is looking forward to serving as an assistant coach with Chris Chelios under head coach Ron Wilson. In the past, Cole has crossed coaching paths with a number of former Griffins, including John Gruden and Kelly Miller. Jake Visser, who was the assistant equipment manager in Grand Rapids for three seasons (2007-10), is in his fifth year with NTDP.
“It’s amazing how many guys I see who I either played with or against or coached,” Cole said. “It’s great to see so many guys continuing in the hockey business.”
Based in Ann Arbor since its inception in 1996, the program moved into the old Compuware Arena in Plymouth this fall. The facility, which has been renamed USA Hockey Arena, is being renovated with new locker rooms, a weight room and offices in the works.
After moving more times than he can count due to all the places he played and coached, Cole has been happy to stay in one place with his wife, Debbie, and their three daughters, Ashton, Madeleine and Payton.
With his youngest daughter now a junior in high school, though, Cole admits that he has begun to think about his future, whether it’s staying with USA Hockey or moving to a new opportunity in the pros or college ranks.
“I love where I’m at, so there’s no hurry,” Cole said. “The people here are outstanding. They give us the tools and the freedom to do the job we’re tasked with, which is developing and molding these kids into good hockey players and fine young men. As a coach, it’s all you can ask for.”
JED FIEBELKORN: FLY FISHING EXPERT
Jed Fiebelkorn grew up in Minnesota, the so-called “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” For a boy who grew up to love hockey and fishing, there could hardly have been a more perfect place.
“My dad was a big fisherman,” he recalled. “I got a fly rod when I was fairly young and didn’t know much about fly fishing, but we spent summers at a cabin near the boundary waters of Lake Superior and the Gunflint Trail, and it was there that I got my first taste of trout.”
Northern Minnesota was the type of place that could make an avid outdoorsman out of almost anyone. “It was pretty, rugged, remote, off the grid,” said Fiebelkorn, noting that his grandfather had bought the cabin from a trapper. “No power, no water, but a wild and amazing place for a kid to discover the outdoors.”
Fiebelkorn would grow up and play hockey at the University of Minnesota, where Travis Richards was his teammate for two seasons. Richards, of course, would eventually play 655 games in a Griffins uniform, or 650 more than the number that Fiebelkorn played during his one season (1998-99) in Grand Rapids.
It was just long enough to make an impression on Fiebelkorn, who played professionally for five seasons until a knee injury prematurely ended his career. He remembers the city as being “a super cool town.”
“The thing I remember most about Grand Rapids was the environment there,” said Fiebelkorn, recalling that he joined the Griffins right before the holidays that winter. “It was just a warm, inviting place to play.”
He recalled that the city was hit by a huge snowstorm during his stay, which might not seem that memorable for a Minnesota native, except Fiebelkorn joined the Griffins from the ECHL expansion team in South Florida known as the Miami Matadors.
Actually, Fiebelkorn was already familiar with West Michigan, having played the previous season in Kalamazoo for the Michigan K-Wings. His teammates there included a pair of future Griffins: Aris Brimanis and John Emmons.
Following his brief stint in Grand Rapids, Fiebelkorn decided to go to Germany to play, but he appeared in only 22 games before he wrecked his knee. “I figured I was going to play a few more years in Europe, but when my career ended, I had to figure out what was next.”
Having studied psychology as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, Fiebelkorn figured he would pursue sports psychology. “I was drawn to the mental side of performing and when I looked at schools with programs, there was the University of Montana,” he said.
The idea of attending graduate school in Big Sky Country was just too good for Fiebelkorn to pass up.
He had become acquainted with the West after an uncle and cousin moved to Colorado when he was a boy. “As I got older, my cousin started fly fishing for trout in the rivers out there, so I started visiting him regularly,” he said. “I began to venture out to places like the Green River in Utah and, eventually, to the famed rivers of Montana.”
In Montana, Fiebelkorn saw a unique opportunity.
“I knew the guiding game a bit from my cousin, so I figured I could run a few trips and make a few extra bucks while I was going to graduate school,” he said. “My wife (Shannon) loved the area, too, so when I finished my master’s degree, we just decided to stay.”
And thus, Endless Drift Outfitters was born.
Fiebelkorn has been a full-time guide in western Montana for the better part of a decade, taking anglers of all types – “from raw beginners to people who have fished all over the world” – to his adopted state’s blue ribbon trout streams, including the Blackfoot River, Bitterroot River, Clark Fork River, the Missouri and Rock Creek.
A few years ago, Fiebelkorn was approached to host a fly fishing show for television. He co-hosted an instructional show called “Fly Fisherman” for two seasons, then hosted another show, “Trout Unlimited: On The Rise,” on his own for two more.
“I was never the guy who loved the camera or the spotlight, but when they flipped on the camera, I didn’t have much of a problem with it,” he said. “I think it’s because the teaching aspect came naturally to me. I just did my thing and it worked out.”
Fiebelkorn loves sharing his passion for the sport of fly fishing. In fact, he teaches two courses on the fundamentals of fly fishing at the University of Montana.
“One of my passions is to fish new water, and you can always fish different species, different areas and different parts of the world. You’re constantly learning new intricacies of rivers and bug life and hatches. One thing that I truly love about the sport is that you can continue to learn and get better. It’s a lifelong endeavor.”
The television shows allowed Fiebelkorn to travel to some of the world’s most beautiful fly fishing destinations, even going as far as the Patagonia region of Chile. Cuba, Mongolia and Kamchatka are a few of the places still on his bucket list.
“I’m keeping my eyes open for new projects,” he said. “If the opportunity arises and I can tie hosting together with writing and field producing, I would definitely be interested.”
He’s hoping to grow his outfitting business beyond the borders of Montana. He has hosted several trips to the Florida Keys, where his wife’s family spends a lot of time, and he’s trying to develop trips to the Bahamas and Alaska. “There’s an adage that trout don’t live in ugly places; they live in beautiful places. And the sport of fly fishing takes you to amazingly beautiful places.”
In the meantime, he’s content spending more time with his two boys, Oden, 8, and Hatcher, 5.
“I’ve introduced them to the outdoors, and we’ve obviously spent a lot of time on the rivers, the streams and the wilderness of Montana,” he said. “I’m just trying to get them out there and allowing them to have fun. They’re not double-hauling 100 feet of line yet, but they’re on their way to becoming fly fishermen.”
Fiebelkorn misses playing hockey and the joys of being on a team, but he has no regrets.
“I’m doing exactly what I always wanted to do,” he said. “I’m not making millions and millions of dollars, but I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else anywhere else. It’s all about the lifestyle and Montana is it for me.”
CHRIS BALA: BOARDING SCHOOL AMBASSADOR
Chris Bala has good memories of playing for the Griffins.
“I look back very fondly on Grand Rapids because it was my first season as a pro,” said Bala, a second-round draft pick of the Ottawa Senators who made his pro debut with the Griffins during the 2001-02 season after graduating from Harvard University.
“I was a wide-eyed kid, naive as could be,” Bala said, noting he was one of the few rookies on a team filled with veterans like Kip Miller, Travis Richards, John Gruden and James Black, all of whom were age 31 or older. “To be honest, I had no clue, no sense of what was up from down.”
Bala remembers a moment early in his first season where head coach Bruce “Butch” Cassidy scheduled an optional skate after a couple of rough games.
“I took him at his word; to me, optional meant optional. I thought, ‘This is pretty cool,’” Bala recalled. “So I slept in the next morning, had breakfast and when I showed up at 5 o’clock for the next day’s game, I immediately knew something was wrong.
“I found out I was the only one not to go. Everybody had been there. I wasn’t trying to be a big wheel or do anything of the sort. In my mind, I took the ‘option’ and in a veteran-laden room, you can imagine, it didn’t go over very well. The guys gave me some serious heat.”
Bala remembers having a sit-down with Cassidy around Thanksgiving that season, a “hey kid, when are you going to figure it out” meeting that may have been his awakening, along with the opportunity to play on the same line with Miller.
Blessed with speed, Bala blossomed under Miller’s wing, scoring 21 goals that season, which tied for second-best on the team next to the 22 tallied by Petr Schastlivy.
“When I look back, the success I had in Grand Rapids might not have been the best thing for me,” he said. “I think I might have gotten pigeonholed as a scorer, and I’m not totally positive that was the best label to bear.”
Bala played six NHL games with the Senators during his rookie campaign, but he spent all of the next season in Binghamton when Ottawa moved its affiliation to upstate New York and the Griffins began their affiliation with the Detroit Red Wings.
He eventually was dealt to the Minnesota Wild and played for Todd McLellan in Houston before bouncing around the AHL for a couple of years with Hershey and Milwaukee. He finished his career with the ECHL’s Reading Royals in 2009.
Once he qualified as a veteran, Bala knew his days were numbered. Not wanting to pursue playing in Europe, he decided to call it a career rather than play out the string.
“I probably could have played a couple of more years, but I walked away from the game on my own volition,” Bala said. “It was not an easy decision but one that I remain comfortable with to this day. I have no regrets.”
Bala considered pursuing a job on Wall Street but decided the financial world was not his thing. He eventually found his way back to The Hill, the private boarding school in Pennsylvania he had once attended.
Today, Bala is the school’s associate director of admissions and director of financial aid, as well as its hockey coach.
“I don’t mean to be corny or cliche, but my time at Hill changed my life,” said Bala, who joined The Hill staff in 2007 and lives in a dormitory on campus with his wife Katie, an elementary school teacher, and their three children, Joshua, 9; Jackson, 7; and Gianna, 3.
Bala decided to attend Hill after he was selected at age 17 to play for a U.S. National Team at a tournament in Japan.
“Colleges started calling and because I had decent grades and scores, there was some Ivy League interest,” Bala said. “At that time, prep schools were seen as a yellow brick road to college, and I was drawn to The Hill by their coach.”
John Micheletto, now coaching at UMass-Amherst after stints at Vermont, Notre Dame and Union College, was considered one of the best young coaches in the prep ranks. “Nothing against my high school at the time, but I figured if I was going to end up matriculating at an Ivy League institution or a good college, I wanted a different setting.”
Academics aside, Hill helped Bala with his confidence. He served as class president before heading to Harvard where he earned a B.A. in government.
“I felt like I became a different person,” Bala said. “A school like ours places so much responsibility on kids that they’re forced in a good way to step up and be accountable to high expectations. We talk about positive peer pressure, and I very much got swept up in the rising tide. My experience at Hill was crucial to who I became.
“It was a really special two years of my life.”
Founded in 1851, The Hill School offers a liberal arts curriculum that challenges its students to “work hard; think and reason; be fulfilled; serve the common good; and be prepared to lead as citizens of the world.” Patrick Rissmiller, who played for the Griffins during the 2009-10 season, also went to Hill before attending Holy Cross College.
Although Hill was an all-boys school when Bala attended, it is now co-ed with 502 students from 28 states and 27 countries. “We want our students to become critical thinkers, so we still stress the written word and the importance of becoming effective communicators,” Bala said.
To combat the image of the ivory tower of some boarding schools, he notes that the admission office makes a concerted effort to address socio-economic diversity. It helps that the school is located in the middle of blue-collar Pottstown and offers community service initiatives.
“We’re not a school with 500 kids with straight A’s, and not all of our kids come from families who can afford $55,000 for tuition,” said Bala, noting that 40 percent of the student body receive some sort of financial aid.
The Hill School has been a great place for Bala and his wife to raise their three kids. Both boys play hockey, and Bala has a constant reminder of his time in Grand Rapids. A framed photo of Van Andel Arena hangs over his older son’s bed.
“In some ways, my job is 24/7. There’s no line between my personal and professional life, but I have the ability to have a career and be a full-time dad and husband at the same time,” Bala said. “At the end of the day, I really love what I do.”