Sarasota business owner tends goal at three ball hockey venues in region

Executive

Tim Holliday is the co-owner of Children's World Uniform Supply in Sarasota, where he and his wife, Cynthia, provide school uniforms for schools along the west coast of Florida. They also sell unique toys and gifts and operate a U.S. Post Office contract unit. The business has been in Sarasota since 1964, with the couple running it since 2001.

Diversion

Ball hockey. Essentially, the game is like ice hockey but played on a dry surface and uses a plastic ball instead of a puck. Holliday plays goalie three times a week, participating in ball hockey in Lakewood Ranch, Englewood and Tampa.

Early days: Holliday first got introduced to street hockey as a child growing up outside Seattle. There were only a few kids in his area, and they played two-on-two basketball, baseball and football. When a minor league hockey team came to the area, they decided to try out the sport themselves. His getup included a hockey mask, stick and used baseball glove. “The rest of it — leg pads and blocker stuff — my dad made all that out of multilayer cardboard,” Holliday says. “I played goalie. … Everybody was shooting at me,” he recalls, saying: “I always loved it [and] just kind of gravitated toward goalie.”

News flash: Holliday attended high school in Sarasota. About five years ago, he read an article in the East County Observer, sister paper of the Business Observer, about a ball hockey league in Lakewood Ranch. The Tampa Bay Lightning had built a rink near Lakewood Ranch High School, Holliday says, as part of an outreach program. After reading the article about the Manatee Ball Hockey League that played at the Lakewood Ranch rink, Holliday reached out to the local organizer. “He met me one day there before the season started and had me suit up because they had some extra gear in the shed,” Holliday says. “I’d never had actual leg pads like that, so I was putting them on the wrong legs.”

Net gain: Once the organizer began shooting on him, Holliday recalls, “He was like, you're not bad. And your positioning is good. … So I kind of took it from there and started playing in their league.” The Manatee Ball Hockey League has two eight-week seasons, he says, in September and October as well as February and March. Games are on Saturdays. About 200 people are part of the league.

Hockey life: Getting back into shape after taking time off between seasons is hard, and Holliday wanted to keep playing. So he and a couple of other guys started playing pickup games. Nearly a year ago, Holliday joined an additional league that plays Tuesday nights north of Tampa International Airport. There are some slight differences. “We play four-on-four at the rink in Lakewood Ranch, and they play three-on-three” in Tampa, he says. “They go pretty much year-round.” The Tampa rink is “small,” according to Holliday, who says: “It’s super fast, and it's good for me, because it lets me work on a different part of my game down low and quick.”

With the blocker: A few months ago, Holliday heard about ball hockey in Englewood at Tringali Park, so he started playing there on Sunday nights. The Englewood rink is full-size, larger than at Lakewood Ranch and Tampa, so the players face off five-on-five. While not a formal league, the players compete year-round, Holliday says. “My hockey life is Tuesday nights, Saturday mornings and Sunday nights,” Holliday says.

Courtesy image

Age range: The ball hockey players Holliday is competing against range from high school students to senior citizens. In Tampa, most of the guys are in their 30s and 40s, Holliday says, while in Lakewood Ranch and Englewood, there’s a broader range. “I'm definitely on the higher end,” says Holliday, who notes one of the newer goalies is a woman of 50 who has been playing her whole life. “With most goalies, like in the NHL, they're retiring at 35 or 40. I started at 53,” says Holliday, now 58. 

Glad for pads: “I'm trying to make up for last time,” Holliday says. “I love this so much. I'm going to play as much as I can, because I know at some point,” that won’t be possible. For goalies especially, “You're doing a lot of up [and] down, and it's taxing on your body.” Holliday notes he wears full ice hockey gear to protect himself, adding: “You're kind of like the Michelin man.”

In the crease: Being the goalie is a vital role, but one that often goes under the radar. “We don't ever get to score,” Holliday says. “That's not the gig, you know. So you're trying to stop people from doing what they're wanting to do, and if you stop them, you're your team's hero.” On the other hand, “If you don't stop them, a lot of times folks are looking at you like, ‘Well, why didn't you get that?' It's your fault,” he says.

Hero or heel: The sport is about the dynamics of the team, according to Holliday. It's one of those up and down things, which is very similar to the business, Holliday says, adding: “You're the hero one day, and you're the heel the next.”

Finding focus: As a business owner, Holliday says, his mind is constantly on his to-do list and things like payroll. “What I like most about [ball hockey] is that you have to be so dialed in to where that ball is all the time and what's going on,” Holliday says. “You have to shut your mind off from all those things, from work and everything else." Some of the shots that come at him are going 80 to 85 mph. “When I step out there,” Holliday says, “I'm not thinking about anything else other than that little orange ball.”