By Jim Hague
NEWARK –
Coming from a family that featured two products of the famed St. Anthony High School basketball program, namely his father, Lenny and uncle Ziggy, Bryan Haczyk seemed destined to become a basketball player as well.
Not quite.
“I never played basketball at all,” said Haczyk, who has lived most of his life in Nutley and still resides there. “My father and uncle are tall, but I wasn’t blessed with their size. I knew my father was a pretty good player (going from St. Anthony to the now-defunct Upsala College), but I never played basketball. My brothers and I played some baseball, but I gravitated towards hockey.”
Bryan Haczyk was introduced to the sport of hockey when he was still a toddler living in his father and mother’s native Jersey City.
“I saw kids playing in Pershing Field and wanted to do the same,” Haczyk said. “So my mother dressed me up and got me on the ice at Pershing Field. I was about 5 years old.”
Haczyk played for the Jersey City Capitals program at Pershing Field and also played for the Bayonne Rangers at an early age. It quickly led to other chances in travel hockey.
To read the full story, see this week’s issue of The Observer.
