Pittsburgh Vengeance Announces Plans for Special Hockey for 2024-25 Season.

The Pittsburgh Vengeance Hockey Club is proud to announce the addition of a Special Hockey program for individuals with developmental disabilities for the 2024-25 season.

The mission of the Pittsburgh Vengeance Special Hockey program is to give people with special needs the opportunity to play ice hockey in an environment with instructional and physical adaptations, which gives the athletes the means to participate and compete actively. The new program will be based at Alpha Ice Complex in Pittsburgh, PA, and will share all the resources available to the other Pittsburgh Vengeance AAA teams.

“This is an amazing opportunity for both special needs families and the hockey community north and east of the City of Pittsburgh,” remarked Scott Fazzone, who currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Pittsburgh Vengeance Hockey Club and is also the Founder and President of the Southpointe Grizzlies Special Hockey Program located in Washington County, Pennsylvania. “The ability for these athletes to share a name and logo with a local AAA hockey program will hopefully start a new trend in our area on how these programs are viewed as well as create a more collaborative effort towards the sustainability of special hockey in the Pittsburgh region.”

“As we learned more about Special Hockey, it seemed like a perfect fit for our organization,” said Pittsburgh Vengeance General Manager David Dorsey, “Our organization promotes community service for our players and actively looks for coaches who want to give back to the sport that they are passionate about. We view the addition of this program as a win-win for our existing network of players, coaches, and volunteers as well as the special needs community.”

In addition to physical hockey skills, the program will emphasize the development of desirable individual characteristics such as socialization, dependability, self-reliance, concentration, willingness to share, and personal accountability. The game of hockey is used as a tool to develop characteristics that will help each player be more successful both inside and outside of the hockey environment.

More information on the new program will be available over the upcoming months. The anticipated start date for Pittsburgh Vengeance Special Hockey is September 2024.