KEY WEST

While most kids his age in Key West are out playing baseball, football or basketball, 10-year-old Joey Eppy has another passion, one that took him off the fields and courts and onto a much colder surface.

Eppy, a native Key Wester, found his niche on the ice playing hockey.

This summer, when he's not on the road heading to and from games and practices with his travel team out of Pembroke Pines or actually on the ice, Eppy can be found selling lemonade and other treats at a stand outside of Paradise Tattoo, which is owned by his parents, at 627 Duval Street. The money raised at the stand will go toward helping with the costs for Eppy's budding hockey career -- he has been playing since he was 3 years old -- which can add up to more than $10,000 each year.

Greg Eppy, Joey's father, said the family has gotten all kinds of reactions when people learn about Joey's love of ice hockey and its inherent conflict with his Key West upbringing.

"Everybody thinks we're nuts," Greg said. "They say we should teach him how to fish or do something Key West style, but we try and give our kids what they want, not necessarily what we want."

Recently, the family got a chance to mix ice hockey with a more traditional Keys pastime.

On a trip to Pembroke Pines for a game in late July, the Eppys made a stop at Jules' Undersea Lodge in Key Largo. Wearing his jersey, Joey went 30 feet underwater and posed for a photo with his hockey stick at his side. He submitted the photo to a web site where players can post pictures of the craziest places their hockey sticks have been.

"That was probably our longest stop in the Keys," Joey said. "It was a lot of fun."

Joey said he doesn't know what his coach thought about the photo, but his mom, Doreen Eppy, had a good idea, especially considering Joey's team lost.

"Coach probably thought you shouldn't take your stick scuba diving before games," she said with a laugh.

Both Greg and Doreen are from New York -- Greg from NYC and Doreen from Rochester -- but neither played hockey, or really any organized sports, as kids. They moved to Key West 23 years ago, and it wasn't until Joey started playing roller hockey here in town as a 3-year-old that they really became interested in the sport.

"We played stickball in Manhattan," Greg said. "We didn't really have organized sports when I was a little kid. Or at least I didn't know about them."

Joey, who has an uncle that plays recreationally in New York, first fell in love with the sport while attending a Rangers game at Madison Square Garden with his parents as a 2-year-old. That night, the team had a giveaway for fans in which they handed out small ice scrapers, for car windows, that were shaped like hockey sticks. Joey kept his stick as the latest addition to his growing hockey collection -- he had received a pair of plastic skates along with pads and a helmet for his second birthday.

"I remember getting them and I put them on and I had them for like two years because they could adjust," Joey said of the skates. "Those things lasted forever."

His ice-scraper stick was eventually lost, along with many of the family's possessions, when their house was flooded during Hurricane Wilma in 2005. Because of the storm, Joey, 5 years old at the time, took a break from hockey that season, the lone break between his first game at age 3 and now.

"I grew up liking hockey, but I never thought about it after I left New York," Doreen said. "Once we came here I didn't think about it, but Joey just... I'm telling you, it was that ice scraper. That was the beginning of it."

Since that first game, Joey, who lists the Flyers, Panthers and Rangers as his favorite pro teams, has become a lot more acquainted with the sport and several of its star players.

The family has traveled to Deerwood, Minn., for two weeks each summer so that Joey can attend the Heartland Hockey Camp run by former NHL player and U.S. National Team member Steve Jensen. At the 2009 camp, he worked with Jamie Langenbrunner, the current captain of the New Jersey Devils and the captain of the U.S. team at this year's Winter Olympics.

Joey also had an opportunity a few years ago, with his travel team, to play in a scrimmage between periods at a Panthers game in Sunrise. In addition to playing on the ice in front of the home crowd, he and the other players also got a chance to meet a lot of the pros and check out the Panthers' locker room and training area.

"They had in each corner every single kind of thing that you could use on your stick or your skate," Joey said of the Panthers' facility. "Anything you could need, they had it. They had big buckets just filled with bubble gum. I thought it was crazy. In one corner they've got all kinds of tape, every kind of tape you could imagine. And then in the other corner they had all the laces: thin, thick, metal tips, plastic tips, no tips, knots on the end. One corner had every single kind of smelling wax you can put on your stick. They had an entire room just for their sticks."

While the camps and abundance of ice time have helped Joey develop into a better player, they haven't been cheap. The cost for one season with his travel team is $5,000 per player, plus he has substantial travel costs with he and his dad traveling up and down the Keys a few days each week.

Greg estimates his drive time each week is about 24 hours -- four hours each way to take Joey to his practices and games in Pembroke Pines up to three times a week. He said the trips don't bother him, though, as they provide time to spend with his son as well as his daughter Amanda, who will turn 7 in October and often rides along. Amanda, who has also been playing roller hockey in Key West since she was 3 years old, is an aspiring figure skater.

This year, the family estimates the costs for hockey will add up to more than $10,000.

To help with those costs, Joey came up with the idea about six weeks ago to open the lemonade stand outside of the tattoo shop that his parents have owned for 18 years. Joey said he was originally inspired by his cousin, who held a similar fundraiser in town.

"One time my cousin came down here with a friend and she had a lemonade stand to raise money for cancer (research)," he said. "She had a stand outside of Publix and made a lot of money, so I decided to do it out here."

When Joey is away at games, his sister can be found running the stand. The travel season with his team based out of Pembroke Pines will begin play on Labor Day with a tournament in Orlando.

Joey, who will be entering the fifth grade this fall at Montessori Elementary, tried other sports. He found baseball too slow, and didn't really enjoy football or soccer. He has a black belt in Taekwondo, but said nothing else really compares to the thrill he gets on the ice.

"I don't know why," he said. "I just always liked the sport."

wjacobson@keysnews.com