At the age of 17, Steve Osacky left his hometown of Chicago and moved to Cleveland - by himself.
Wondering whether he could play hockey after high school, Osacky received his family's blessing to play for the Cleveland Lumberjacks of the Central States Hockey League, a junior B league team.
After that, the decision to move was easy.
(In high school) I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do
Osacky said. I wasn't thinking about where I could play or what I could do.
Once the Lumberjacks expressed interest, I realized that's where I wanted to go.
There was one problem - he was fresh out of high school and his family was not going to move with him.
Enter the billet family.
Families in cities with junior hockey teams can register to host players. The players' parents or the teams usually compensate the host families who treat the player as one of their own.
Osacky moved into an already robust family in Strongsville.
It was really different, he said. There were six of them already, and I just kind of fit right in as if I was their kid, too.
He took classes part-time at Cuyahoga Community College and made a seamless transition while living away from his family.
Mike and Sharon Genco not only provided him shelter food and took care of his dirty laundry
but they also respected his privacy - not one of the strong suits of dorm life.
There weren't people running up and down the halls at 3 a.m. or being loud and annoying, Osacky said. I had a lot more privacy living with my family and I learned a lot of relationship-building skills from them.
Playing hockey and making use of free time were the only things he had to do in Cleveland. But once coach Dan Morris began recruiting him to play in Athens
he knew the priorities would be markedly different.
There was so much down time (in junior hockey), he said. It was a bunch of out-of-town kids looking for something to do.
The biggest challenge here is learning how to manage your time. School is the big focus here and that wasn't the case before
and that was a major adjustment.
Like Osacky, freshman forward Ryan Whyte spent two years playing junior hockey out of high school. He played across borders in a small hockey-crazed city called Brockville, Ontario.
Unlike Osacky, who lived with a big family, Whyte and his roommate were hosted by a middle-aged, single travel agent named Marnie Burbridge. She was usually traveling, but made home life a lot easier for the both of them.
She was on the road a lot
Whyte said. But when she was home
she really took care of us.
She did our laundry, paid for a lot of our things and helped us out when we were sick.
To return the favor
the boys cooked meals for Burbridge when she returned and kept the house in order.
His quasi-celebrity status in suburban Ontario then vanished in favor of textbooks
West Green and dining halls.
In Brockville
you go into the grocery store and everyone knows who you are
