Driving into Norwich on a chilly winter day, I smile as I pass the green. The kids skating on our communal sheet of ice seem to be living/creating the perfect childhood memories. I watch them getting a feel for their skates helped by the leverage and balance of a chair or milk carton leading their path. The older kids push a snow shovel across the surface working toward perfect clean ice. A pack of hockey players chase a puck around with wild abandon. Me thinks, I am looking at pure joy. Despite myself (it is cold and it is winter after all), I smile. When my kids skate on this improvised ‘pond’ ice, I find myself lost in watching, sometimes for an hour or more. Skating on the Norwich green is exactly where everyone should be in that moment.

Even before I grew familiar with skating and hockey I admired the ‘hockey kids’ gliding around the ice like, as they looked to me, miniature Wayne Gretzkys. I thought that the local hockey program must be great since there were so many excellent skaters on the green. Not long after these initial thoughts, my two kids began playing with the Hanover Hockey Association (HHA). And that’s how we met Dave Reece.

To say that Dave Reece is just a skating coach is like saying that the Pope is just a priest. Sure Dave teaches about the skills and techniques of skating, but more than this, every practice and drill is imbued with an underlying philosophy. Here is my Yogi Bera-inspired take on his many-part philosophy: 1) have fun because sometimes it won’t be; 2) fall down because that is the only way you’ll learn to get up; 3) work hard because no one will hand anything to you; 4) set a goal, see #1. More simply put, the best athletes only make it LOOK easy; they are actually working harder than everyone else. Or as the cyclist Greg Lemond, America’s first Tour de France winner, once said, “It never gets any easier; you just go faster.”

So, it is never a surprise when I attend one of his skating clinics and watch him work with kids in his typical, high-spirited fashion: shouting, clapping, cheering, encouraging, extolling. Pure joy. The kids are sweating, he’s sweating. Most are laughing. He saves his loudest, high-pitched “Wooo­oos!” (imagine the hoot a baby owl would make if you sat on it) for when a skater loses an edge and tumbles to the ice. “That’s how you learn!” he’ll shout. Or as he told me, “the kids will never know how far they can go until they fall down. Then I’m there to give them the confidence to get back up and keep trying.” In the myriad of discussions I have had with Dave over the years, our conversations invariably end with one or both of the following phrases: “God, it’s great isn’t it!” or “Wow! That’s fun!” One of Norwich’s more senior HHA players is Gavin Ratliff, a seventh grader at the Richmond Middle School. He has been skating with Coach Reece for a number of years. “When I broke my finger at the beginning of last season, Dave helped me by keeping me on the ice; and he helped me immensely to further my level of skating and quickness, as well as edge work. [Coach Reece] always finds a way to make things fun, whether it’s a hot chocolate for the one who scores first, or donuts for everyone who got up early to work with him.” “Sometimes the skates at 6am are the best part of the week. Everyone is a little tired, but Coach Reece comes on the ice and gets everybody really fired up. It’s a blast!”

Dave was a standout, All-American goalie at the University of Vermont in the early 1970s. After college he kicked around the professional ranks playing in a handful of NHL games for the Boston Bruins. At some point, before he took up coaching, he was a member of Team USA. He has played hockey at the very highest levels.

So, it may be surprising that as an elite athlete his love of hockey results from its ability to be an ‘equalizer.’ That is Dave will preach that, any kid willing to work hard and put in the effort can develop the skating skills to compete with the best of his peers. Hard work and dedication differentiate the good from the great. Or, as he might say, “…natural talent is important, but not as important as sweating!” These lessons apply throughout a person’s life. That is why he works not only with kids, but he also coaches adult skaters from time to time. Early this season he conducted a clinic for Campion Rink’s women hockey players. Among this group are a number of Norwich residents. During a chance conversation with Nor­wich resident Roberta Alexander, I was able to get a non-hockey person’s perspective on Coach Reece. Working with Dave is a two-for-one deal; his wife Mary always joins him on the ice: “Dave and Mary are a fabulous combo—he makes raucous comments about our skating ability while she cheers us on. We love the abuse and keep coming back for more. He is a devil with a heart of gold, while she is the angel who’s got his tail, and there is no better way to learn where your edges are.”

The inextricability of coaching and teaching, playing and learning, cheerleading and urging has been a theme throughout Dave’s career. A portion of his career was dedicated to coaching hockey and recruiting students at the prep school level. Today, he is an educational consultant working with his wife, Mary, to prepare junior high and high school students for the rigors of prep school and college. It is no surprise that his primary interest is the challenges of pursuing both athletics and education at the highest possible levels. His work with young skaters seems really to be the icing on the cake of a career dedicated to education, on many levels.

Work hard and you’ll succeed; make sure you are having fun; etc. Such sentiments make Coach Reece sound like a Pollyanna. No doubt, he is inherently optimistic about the value of focused effort and sweat. But, he has little tolerance for the halfhearted and under-committed. If you set goals with him, he will make sure that you have the tools to achieve them; but know that he will never let you off easy. If you’re not willing to fall and get back up, don’t bother him. As he might say, “Excellence is never given; it has to be earned… through effort and perseverance.”

“ I remember working really hard at his sessions and learning something new every time. He is just one of those clever people who can get everyone to work their hardest. Probably because he is so supportive.”

—Vicky Bippart

“ I was walking into Campion [Rink] one time and bumped into Dave. He was carrying a baguette from King Arthur. He looked at me and handed me the bread. All he said was, ‘Here you go.’ It’s just these random acts of kindness that stick out in my mind.”

—John Brigham

Roberta Alexander

—Roberta Alexander

“ He knows when to harass and when to cheer you on. The result is you find your own weak links…you work on them over and over until that eureka moment when you can put it all together and the move actually works in play! …You can tell that he just loves hockey and that he wants to share as much knowledge, enthusiasm and encouragement as possible so that his students become skilled and confident skaters who are positively addicted to hockey!”

—Ceci Tseng

Time and memory have faded the details of the moment, but I will always remember the feeling. I had just pulled the temporary paper covers off my newly installed solar electric panels, and then raced to the basement to check the meters—I was actually making electricity! With this new power, my first act was pulling the trigger on my circular saw which roared to life running on nothing but sunshine.

I spent the previous spring and summer clearing land and building my first house. I was in love with the beauty of the place, and the absence of any nearby power lines seemed only to reinforce the sense of remoteness. Why would I need to bother with poles, wires and huge installation costs when I could just make my own power? I had studied all the alternative energy catalogs I could find and they fueled my stubborn idealistic notions of self-reliance. I settled on a mail order company in Massachusetts and selected a complete solar electric kit touted to be the “Cadillac of alternative energy systems” (looking back fifteen years later, an actual Cadillac probably would have made more electricity).

I took an electricity class in high school, had done some wiring, and have even been shocked a couple of times, so I had no fears with putting this kit together. A few deliveries later and I was ready to start making my own power.

First there were the sixteen photovoltaic panels. These got mounted to the side of the house in aluminum frames. Then we can’t forget the storage system—twenty-four golf cart batteries in a basement enclosure, which are wired together to act as six twenty-four volt batteries, and finally the brains of the system, the inverter, whose main function is to take the DC battery power and turn it into AC power, like a “normal” house has.

Given the high cost of making your own electricity, my plan was to have a house that used as little as possible. First to be abandoned was any kind of central heating system with lots of south-facing glass and a woodstove as the replacement. A regular refrigerator used too much electricity; I got a propane model, barely larger than a cooler (as I would soon regret, frost-free it is not). The hot water heater, dryer and range all ran on propane. That left the well pump, washing machine and dishwasher as the large electric loads. Power hungry appliances like toasters and microwaves did not make the cut. However, the luxury of toast was hard to give up, so my family quickly learned to make toast with a campfire-type toaster on the gas stove. For lighting, the only viable option was compact fluorescents, fortunately these bulbs are mainstream now, as years ago they were harder to find and quite expensive.

As my family started living in the house, the reality of living with limited electricity set in. For one thing it’s not as sunny around here as you may think it is. For every clear day we have about five cloudy or partially cloudy days. On a brilliant, clear day our panels put out about a thousand watts—about the same amount of power a small microwave uses. As soon as the skies turn cloudy, that power output drops dramatically. I obsessively monitored the built-in meters on the system, constantly checking how much power was coming in, how much was going out (and who was using it!), and how charged the batteries were. After a while I came to know the power use of every electrical device in our home, and settled in to my role as chief electrical worrier and un-plugger.

As long as we have some decent sun every few days or so, there’s enough electricity for lights, computers and quick showers. For larger loads like the washing machine or dishwasher we need to have full sun, and if that’s not an option, we usually run a propane-fired generator. The batteries could run these larger loads on their own, but lead acid batteries have a finite number of times they can be fully discharged and recharged. So powering large loads with a generator when sunshine is not an option prolongs the life of the batteries. We managed to get twelve years out of our original set before replacing them. Batteries are the weak link in this system, they need constant attention unlike the panels or inverter. Every month you should overcharge or “equalize” the batteries. They also need to have distilled water added every couple of months and have their terminals checked for corrosion. The advantage of a “grid tied” system is you eliminate the need for batteries; you feed your excess power to the grid directly and then draw power from the grid when you need it. The only downside to this system is if the grid power is out your power is out.

I’m pretty sure not all family members share my pride in using such meager amounts of electricity. They are well aware that I value the well-being of the batteries over their personal comfort. I’m known for switching off lights before people have actually left the room, turning off the Christmas tree lights as soon as no one’s looking, and generally unplugging anything I can. Our two oldest children have moved out, and probably won’t be moving back home any time soon. The realization that your average public restroom has more electricity, heat and hot water than your childhood home is quite an eye opener. Our son’s social life is severely compromised, as multiple video game consoles and televisions quickly deplete our batteries. He’s learned to spend weekends elsewhere, plugged in to the great grid beyond. My wife has conceded to only using a hair dryer a couple of times each year. My weakness is that shiny idol of desire, the espresso maker, a true source of alternative energy sin.

There have been some pretty bleak moments where I’ve wished we were just hooked up to the grid. The low for me was one cloudy Christmas break with a house full of people, dead batteries and a generator that wouldn’t start. But over the years, living with less electricity has become routine and I’m still stubborn enough to take on the responsibility of making my own. n

Christopher Smith is an architect and lives in Norwich off the grid with his wife, Dawn Carey, son Tyler and their daughter, Hellie (his older daughters, Hillary and Althea, are grown and living on the grid elsewhere!).