From stick boy to Stampede player, high school senior takes the ice

By Mick Garry, for Pigeon605

After a few minutes of conversation with Easton Zueger, you quickly gather in that he’s a thoughtful 18-year-old who speaks in complete paragraphs. He’ll answer your questions like it’s an essay test that he’s going to ace.

This Sioux Falls native, whose taste for the sport of hockey has already taken to him to Arizona for a year and then to Maine for another, is part of the Sioux Falls Stampede for the 2021-22 season.

Going into Saturday’s home opener at the Denny Sanford Premier Center, the 5-8, 189-pound defenseman is the third Sioux Falls native to make the Stampede roster in franchise history. He joins Zeb Knutson (2012-14) and the late Mack Motzko (2020-21).

This is about more than just a return to the town where his mom and dad raised him, though that’s a pretty solid angle. And though it’s exceedingly rare for a local kid to make a USHL roster, it’s about much more than that too.

Easton was going to Stampede games when he was 6 months old, sitting next to his father, Joe, in a baby carrier his father says was the size of a duffel bag. The family has piles of pictures of Easton, too, from his interaction with the Stampede. They could sort them by the year if they wanted, tracing his growth from toddler to elementary school. In time, he became a Stampede stick boy, with a list of duties that expanded as he went along.

His love for the sport went directly through the Stampede and its players. New players became new favorites, and the cycle continued. These were the guys and these were the games, year by year, that filled his head and heart with hockey.

“It might be kind of a cliche, but there’s really no better way to say it: This is a dream come true for me,” Easton said. “It’s a unique dream – we’re just talking about kids who grew up here – but I could not be more honored than to achieve this. The biggest thing is to be able to walk in that locker room on game day or at practice and see that logo hanging in your stall and realize I spent my whole life looking at this and being awestruck by everyone wearing the logo and dreaming of being a part of it.”

In the world of hockey in the United States, there are several levels of play nationally within each age group. There are a few areas in the northern part of the country where playing for the local high school varsity can keep a player on the path to a college scholarship, but most often kids have to go looking outside where they grew up to make it happen.

It is why at age 16 Easton left his family, his friends and O’Gorman High School and moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, for a season to live with a family he’d never met before. The next year, more than 2,700 miles from the Phoenix area and 1,700 miles from Sioux Falls, he played for the Maine Nordiques in the town of Lewiston.

The climates and cultures were spectacularly different. The school situation, muddled though it was by the pandemic almost everywhere, also was much different from one year to the next.

There are many parents who would see the exterior of Easton’s hockey arc to this point and be wondering what exactly Joe and Kristen Zueger were thinking when they decided it was OK for their boy to leave home for months at a time when he was 16.

“I remember when he was a little guy out on the ice and I’d hear stories about parents who were letting their kids leave home at such an early age to let them follow their hockey dreams,” Kristen said. “And I remember thinking we’d never let one of our kids do that.”

What they could not have anticipated, however, is how hockey was going to capture the heart of their son. They could not have anticipated that the first family Easton lived with in Arizona would become like a second family. Lifetime friendships are in place now, from the parents to the kids and right down the line.

The Zuegers could not have known, either, that their son would take such a mature approach to his education, sorting through online classes, actual classes and combinations of the two as gracefully as he has. If they knew that then, what would have seemed outlandish 10 years earlier wouldn’t have seemed quite so wild.

“When he left O’Gorman after his freshman year, it was my daughter’s first year of college,” Joe said. “We were sudden-onset empty-nesters. But when you think about it, it really wasn’t supposed to be about us. Easton is the one who wants to go chase this dream, and he’s the one who wants to set the bar really high for himself. At the end of the day, he’s the one putting himself out there, making himself vulnerable and taking the risk.”

Even so, it’s not so easy having a kid tell you when he’s 15 that he wants to hit the road.

“It wasn’t anything we talked him into or talked him out of,” Joe said. “We just made sure he had a high level of conviction. We felt like we were in a position to trust him to do the right thing, but it was a definitely a leap of faith, that’s for sure.”

From Easton’s view, getting the chance to play hockey was the priority, and the things he did to make sure that happened were small prices to pay. Though it would be impossible for parents and a child to view that first year in Arizona exactly the same way, they share an appreciation for how it all worked out.

When Easton returned home for visits, they saw a kid whose new experiences were building him up, not breaking him down.

“It was my turn to learn some life lessons,” Easton said. “I wanted to get some more eyes on me as a player, and I wanted to force myself to develop as a person and as a player.”

Easton didn’t know the people he would be living with, he didn’t know what it would be like being away from his family, and he didn’t know how he would adjust to a different level of hockey.

“I didn’t think about this being a big step I was taking,” he said. “I just tried to realize where I was in the present. What’s important right now every day? I made sure I was grounded about who I am and making the most of the opportunity.”

Making the most of his opportunity has been a theme throughout this hockey safari. It extended this past summer to answering a cattle call of sorts as an undrafted player trying to make the Stampede roster. He impressed coach Marty Murray enough in that first tryout camp to progress to development camp and, from there, to a roster spot the team has taken into the regular season.

“He came in with a purpose,” said Murray, a former NHL defenseman in his second season coaching the Stampede. “You could really see he was trying to make an impression and make the hockey club. He earned the opportunity to fight through the preseason with us and showed us he wants to learn and he wants to work extremely hard. He has a ways to go yet, but he hasn’t been given anything. He’s earned everything he’s got. You root for kids like that.”

For sheer symmetry, the Zuegers couldn’t ask for any more than they have received in Easton’s return to Sioux Falls. It means he’ll be able to graduate from O’Gorman — which has stuck by the kid through his whole high school career — with the class he came in with as a freshman. His senior year includes online classes but also brick-and-mortar time at the school, an element that means a lot to the family.

“We’ve had such great support from the leaders of that organization,” Kristen said. “And even when he was gone over the last few years, they helped us along the way with selecting classes. What could have been better for him than getting a chance to come back and graduate from O’Gorman?”

Typically, USHL players remain in the league until they’re 20 and then move on to Division I college programs as well-seasoned freshmen. Right now, that’s also Easton’s plan. Until then, it means he can invite his Stampede friends over for football and food, and the family can watch their son play at an elite level in their hometown.

“It’s the whole package – a dream come true,” Kristen said. “There is no other way to put it. We’ve always said we need to trust the process and the process will lead us to do what is best for him. I truly believe that’s why we are where we are. This was meant to be.”

Easton will be playing in his first Stampede regular-season home game Saturday. It’s bound to be another in a series of memorable moments for someone who has learned to be patient in bringing those moments about. It’s one of the life lessons he brought back with him from Arizona and Maine.

“I’ve been able to go out and make a lot of new friends,” Easton said. “But I hit a home run by keeping a core group of friends that I grew up with. Their support means the world to me now that I’m back. It reminds me of where I came from.”