Detroit — Next time you’re ready to curse the cold, you might be warmed to know that a few of the local Church’s good men have strengthened bonds of friendship on a sheet of ice.
The men are seminarians at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, and the ice belongs to one seminarian’s family ice rink.
“My dad put me on skates when I was 2,” says Dave Tomaszycki, 25, a first-year pre-theology student at the seminary.
Tomaszycki’s parents, Art and Joan, laid out a 165-foot by 85-foot outdoor ice rink when they moved to their Casco Township property in 1994. They’ve since installed lights to allow for night play. The Detroit News last year called it one of the best home ice rinks in southeast Michigan.
This winter, Tomaszycki has been inviting fellow seminarians to come home with him on weekends to play hockey on the rink, and about a dozen-and-a-half of them have taken him up on it.
They play four-on-four, with no goal-tenders at the nets, no lifting the puck and no checking, but it can nevertheless get pretty competitive, says Dominic Macioce, 25, a first-year philosophy student.
Unlike Tomaszycki, Macioce says he had never played before, though he had done some ice skating.
“It’s great exercise and a great way to bond and build friendships,” Macioce says.
He adds that he is impressed with how well-maintained the Tomaszyckis keep the rink: “The surface is like glass.”
Deacon Eric Fedewa, 28, says playing pond hockey “is definitely a good workout.”
It is important for seminarians to be physically active, and for them to keep it up after ordination to the priesthood, in Deacon Fedewa’s view.
“I exercise regularly,” he says. “Obviously, it’s important for physical health, but also for mental health — dealing with the stress. And it is also good for your spiritual health, because it helps you be more disciplined.”
Like Tomaszycki, Paul Graney, 26, a first-year philosophy seminarian, has played hockey since childhood.
Graney says he and Tomaszycki realize they have an advantage over their inexperienced fellow seminarians, and “try to bring them along and not be too hard on them.”
Of the four seminarians interviewed, all came to be seminarians by a different path.
Deacon Fedewa, whose home parish is St. Lawrence in Utica, says he first felt the call of priestly vocation about the end of his freshman year at Oakland University.
“I had sort of a reconversion, and I prayed about it and asked others to pray about it,” he says.
Macioce, a member of St. Jane Frances de Chantal Parish in Sterling Heights, says he first considered the priesthood while still in high school, but went on to Oakland University to earn a marketing degree.
“I thank God that Jesus called me, because I am loving life now at Sacred Heart,” Macioce says.
The paths by which Graney and Tomaszycki came to be seminarians are truly out of the ordinary.
Graney, who counts St. Joseph the Worker Parish in Lake Orion as his home parish, had left the Catholic Church for many years. Only after he planned on going into Christian ministry did his study of Christianity and Church history lead him back to the Catholic faith.
“I had a change of faith, and found the Catholic Church to be the one true Church,” Graney said.
Tomaszycki, a parishioner of Immaculate Conception in Ira Township, on the other hand, became deeply interested in ministry when he was in a young adult group and in a rock band, one of whose members was outspokenly Catholic
Tomaszycki’s interest in learning more led him to enroll in Ave Maria University in Florida, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. And he says a pilgrimage to Rome helped him discern a priestly vocation.
