As a former teammate and longtime friend of Tom Frye, I asked him to put together a brief summary of his successful hockey career. Tom’s youth hockey career began in his hometown of Port Huron, Michigan, which he parlayed into a junior career with the Sarnia Ransom Bees of the Western Ontario Junior B league (now the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League) in 1987-88. At the time he played for the Bees, two now well-known players in the league were Dan Bylsma (former NHL player with LA and Anaheim, and Stanley Cup-winning head coach for Pittsburgh) and Brian Wiseman (played for Toronto in the NHL; garnered much attention in youth hockey by breaking Wayne Gretzky’s record by scoring 413 goals in one season). Tom continued his playing career at Brown University, and ultimately he played professionally in the East Coast Hockey League, the Southern Hockey League, and the Central Hockey League.
Looking back on his junior career, Tom recalls Sarnia being part of a skilled and physical league in an era where size and toughness were of particularly great value (Tom is 6’4″, and his playing weight was 240 lbs.; four of his Sarnia teammates were roughly the same size). Tom’s hockey roots run deep: his son, Alex, played for the Chicago Steel of the USHL and the Topeka Roadrunners of the NAHL, and currently is a sophomore forward for the Northern Michigan University Wildcats.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there are numerous routes to higher levels of hockey. The GOJHL definitely is one of them. Also, as witnessed by the continuing career of Alex Frye and thousands of other players, the USHL and NAHL are other high-quality options.