Sports and recreation can be a way to embrace the winter — to meet the season on its own snowy, icy terms. For the Central Vermont Pioneers sled hockey club, leaning in is the essence of the sport, an exhilarating athletic activity requiring uncommon balance, core strength, eye-hand coordination and teamwork. And sleds. And hockey sticks with metal spikes. Bring it on, winter.
Sled hockey — also known as sledge hockey or para ice hockey — is an adaptive sport popular among athletes with disabilities that limit lower-body mobility. Players sit in metal sleds that rest upon two blades mounted under a bucket seat. They propel themselves by digging into the ice with teeth-like metal picks on the butt ends of two hockey sticks, one for each hand. The sticks are roughly one-third the length of standard nonadaptive hockey sticks. Play can be fast-paced, physical and, according to Pioneers captain Jacob “Jake” Lavigne, “awkward.”
Because sleds don’t move backwards with any efficiency, “You constantly have to have your head on a swivel,” said the 30-year-old, who uses a wheelchair off the ice. “There are no other sports where you’re balancing and turning with your hips and turning with your arms.”
Sled hockey also inspires some unique penalties: picking, or the (dangerous) misuse of the stick’s spikes; and T-boning, or ramming the sled nose-first into someone else’s.
At a recent Pioneers practice in Montpelier’s Central Vermont Memorial Civic Center, the play was fair, intense — and notably inclusive. The Pioneers’ club is coed, though predominantly male, and spans multiple generations. The youngest player, Bradley Grenier, is 11. The oldest, Ernest “Ernie” Lavigne, is 73 — Jake’s dad. A few players — allowed per Northeast Sled Hockey League (NESHL) rules and noted on the team roster with the letters “AB” for “able-bodied” — are nondisabled.
Through sled hockey, Pioneers players have found a sense of belonging that can be especially elusive for people with disabilities. But on the ice, their goal is single-minded: They’re a badass hockey team. “We’re aggressive. We’ll hit you. We’re not dirty,” Ernie Lavigne said. “And we’re having fun.”
To spend an afternoon around the Pioneers and their fans is to hear story after story of how sled hockey created opportunities for players with disabilities to transcend that label. As Jake Lavigne, who plays on the higher-tier Gaylord Wolfpack team in Connecticut in addition to leading the Pioneers, put it, “As soon as I get on the ice, I’m not a person in a wheelchair anymore. I’m a hockey player.”
As soon as I get on the ice, I’m not a person in a wheelchair anymore. I’m a hockey player.
Jake Lavigne
Sled hockey reportedly originated at a rehab center in Sweden in the 1960s. Organized sled hockey in Vermont goes back to 2005 with the Vermont Sled Cats, cofounded by Patrick Standen, a Saint Michael’s College philosophy instructor, disabilities scholar and author who began playing in the 1990s.
The Sled Cats, organized under the Northeast Disabled Athletic Association — an adaptive sports nonprofit of which Standen is the board president — still play at the C. Douglas Cairns Recreation Arena in South Burlington. Although the team withdrew from the NESHL and league competition in 2019, it holds open-skate sessions on Sunday afternoons from December to March and plays scrimmages and games on an independent schedule. Some central Vermont players had left the Sled Cats by the time that team pulled out of the NESHL, starting the Pioneers closer to home in 2017.
At the Pioneers’ Montpelier practice, the team was coming off a so-so weekend of league play in Rochester, N.H., where it earned one victory to three losses. Still, the mood was up. After some free skating and shooting, players gathered around coach Roxanne Gaudiel, aka “Coach Rox,” a goalie for Princeton University’s women’s ice hockey team in the early 2000s who also coached with the WSF New York Sled Rangers, an affiliate of the National Hockey League team. She talked tactics with a seriousness well matched to the team’s competitive drive.
That drive has earned the Pioneers a solid reputation in the NESHL. They’re three-time Vermont state champions and have twice brought home gold from the Empire State Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y. “Every team loves playing us,” Ernie Lavigne said.
The Pioneers have come a long way as a club, and no conversation with team members gets too far without a mention of 19-year-old former Pioneer Caleb Crossett of Thetford. According to sled hockey lore, he started playing with veterans in White River Junction when he was 7 years old, then honed his skills with the Pioneers for half a dozen seasons or so before the pipeline for elite players led him to the U.S. National Sled Hockey team. He played in the International Para Hockey Cup last month in Czechia, where Team USA lost to Canada in the championship.
These days, the Pioneers are in a rebuilding phase, according to Troy Kingsbury, 56, who plays alongside his 25-year-old son, Jakob, who has spina bifida. They’ve lost players to injury and the inevitable transition of young people growing up and moving on. Their current lineup lists 14 players, but when even a couple can’t make a game, they’re skating the bare minimum. The club would like to return to the stronger numbers of past seasons, when it could run a travel team and a recreational, or “house,” team. This could expand opportunities, especially for beginners and younger players.
According to the elder Kingsbury, while the Pioneers are a known quantity in the regional sled hockey community, their home ice is rarely the host venue for games. Kingsbury cited a few reasons for this, chief among them the scarcity of ice time for holding weekend tournaments — the typical league format. “Sled hockey was the last kid to the party,” he said, referring to the many youth and school teams in Vermont vying for a slot in rink schedules. The lack of local visibility is a hindrance to growing the sport and his club. “If you don’t have that excitement when people can come see it, they don’t understand it,” he said, adding that he’d happily start riding the bench if the team could beef up its roster.
Funding is also a persistent challenge, in part by design. The Pioneers lack corporate or institutional sponsorship that rival clubs enjoy, and the team is committed to covering costs for any interested player. That can matter a great deal to families already bearing the financial burden of disability care, according to Shannon Towndrow, a former Pioneer whose 15-year-old son, Wedsel, has developmental coordination disorder and is a current player. It’s especially true when a person with a disability ages out of services provided in schools.
“It’s ‘Turn into an adult and figure out life,’” she said. “The support ends. For this, it doesn’t. For hockey, it goes forever.”
The Pioneers make finances work through player and family contributions, fundraising, and community donations. It’s a heavy lift, given the cost of ice time alone, but the effort “has brought the team closer together,” Jake Lavigne said.
If money keeps the Pioneers afloat, something immaterial fuels their momentum. Lavigne cited the club’s multigenerational character as a big part of its appeal — specifically, the presence of role models for younger players, from which he benefited when he started playing sled hockey in 2009.
“It’s like a family,” Pioneer goaltender Lee Reilly, 44, said. He’s a counselor with HireAbility Vermont, formerly VocRehab Vermont, an organization that helps people with disabilities find and maintain jobs. He recalled connecting with the Pioneers not long after he’d become disabled following a lower-leg amputation. “Everybody supported one another,” he said. From his professional perspective, informed by a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling, “The best way for people to learn is from other people who have had that lived experience.”
He made special note of the impact the Pioneers are having on the youngest players. “They’re gaining knowledge from each other and learning and getting that brotherly love,” he said. “It’s really awesome to be there and watch these youth grow.”
Craig Grenier recalled his son Bradley’s reaction upon joining the Pioneers: “Everybody on the ice is like me,” said Bradley, who has cerebral palsy. “At school I’m the only one.’” That sense of belonging could have long-term benefits, the Sled Cats’ Standen observed, noting that some of the qualities that position people for success, such as collaborative skills, are often central to team sports.
Isolation is a common issue for people with disabilities, so the Pioneers build social connections throughout central Vermont. Many players and fans are die-hard Vermont Mountaineers baseball and Norwich University hockey supporters. Christian Sell, 34, known by his teammates as “Buddha,” has earned a superfan’s seat on the Norwich bench during practices. Sell has Mowat-Wilson syndrome, a genetic disorder with physical and cognitive effects. According to his father, John, Christian’s time with the Norwich team has expanded his son’s sense of where he’s welcome and appreciated.
The elder Sell has helped further cultivate that Norwich connection through sled hockey scrimmages with the university’s men’s and women’s ice hockey squads, most recently in September. Norwich hockey player Cole Fagan, a junior forward from North Andover, Mass., suited up for that game and recalled the experience with more than a touch of humility. “Those guys skated circles around us,” he said. “They make it look so easy.”
Fagan, who’s studying exercise science, concurred with Jake Lavigne that the particular physical demands of sled hockey put everyone on an even playing field. Nevertheless, the accumulated sled time of Fagan’s team wasn’t enough to test the Pioneers in their recent scrimmage — and the Pioneers seemed to know it. “They controlled the puck the majority of the game,” Fagan said, speculating that, in the interest of being good sports, “They let off the gas pedal for us a little bit.”
So much for the claim, which teen Wedsel Towndrow has heard from peers, that sled hockey is “not really hockey.” He doesn’t seem to dwell on that misperception much. Instead, he’s focused on what it takes to play at peak potential. “Determination,” he said. “Not getting mad or discouraged when you lose or fall down. Just keep getting back up.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Goal Driven | The Central Vermont Pioneers sled hockey team brings grit and skill to a thrilling — and inclusive — adaptive sport”
This article appears in Winter Preview • 2026.
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