Many in girls hockey or at least on the Eastside know Tito Elumba of Cottage Grove and now Chisago Lakes - he really was and remains a force in helping to get girls in hockey. His daughter Missy was given a great award - Hockey Humanitarian Award - by many the highest award in hockey because it involves on and off ice activity. This is a great story from today's Pioneer Press and a must read for any proud hockey parent or hockey player who thinks they are doing all they can to give back from a community service standpoint.
Minnesotan Missy Elumba found her calling off ice at Northeastern U
Elumba assists outside of sport
By Bruce Brothers
bbrothers@pioneerpress.com
Updated: 04/19/2009 11:42:23 PM CDT
Hockey skates and social consciousness have forged Missy Elumba into a forceful world citizen.
It's quite a transformation for a woman who was so shy in second grade a teacher suggested to her parents that athletics might open her up.
That was Elumba's introduction to hockey.
The St. Paul native — she defines herself as "the biggest rink rat you've ever met" — has seen her passion for hockey evolve into a passion for giving: giving her time to young kids and homeless people in Boston and donating six weeks last summer to work with Mother Teresa's Missionary of Charity in Calcutta, India.
It was Elumba's desire to assist others that led to the Northeastern University senior receiving the Hockey Humanitarian Award during ceremonies at the men's Frozen Four on April 10 in Washington, D.C.
A gracious Elumba, 23, called the award "merely a testament to the importance of putting others before yourself."
In her acceptance speech, she said, "I don't even think I deserve it."
She's probably the only one.
Said Dave Flint, the women's hockey coach at Northeastern: "I've been coaching for 15 years, men and women, and you run into a lot of talented athletes, but very rarely do you have a kid who is not only a good athlete but a great person and a great student. She has it all.
"You hope these students, when they leave college, they get it, but not a lot do. I was one of those, too. You figure it out later in life.
"She understands
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what life is about."
Former Northeastern coach Laura Schuler, now an assistant at Minnesota-Duluth, recalled how Elumba conducted herself.
"Every time a new person came to that team, she was first person to walk up and befriend them," Schuler said. "She'd be out at 2 in the morning handing out water and blankets to homeless people. She was always doing something for a cause. And she never takes credit.
"I don't think I've ever met a person with a bigger heart."
Although the Hobey Baker and the Kazmaier awards to the men's and women's players of the year are considered college hockey's individual prizes, Flint said, "The humanitarian award is maybe the most prestigious. It's every player in college hockey going for this one award."
Elumba is the first Minnesotan and 14th recipient of the Hockey Humanitarian Award, which honors "the sport's finest citizen and recognizes accomplishments of personal character, scholarship and the giving of oneself off the ice to the larger community," according to Northeastern's Web site.
A list of Elumba's off-ice accomplishments on the university's Web site is longer than the 5-foot-2 Elumba is tall. A few:
She volunteered as a construction team leader for United Baptist Katrina Relief in Gulfport, Miss., where she helped in organizing and fundraising as well as directing a team of her peers in reconstructing homes and delivering food and water to residents.
She worked as a summer student health care volunteer in Oaxaca, Mexico, helping doctors deliver primary care, and mentored mentally disabled children in an orphanage there.
She recruited helpers and spearheaded philanthropic groups on the Northeastern campus, in addition to working with the Special Olympics and heading up the university's student-athlete advisory committee.
She worked in a Boston substance abuse program for Latina and African-American mothers and as a preschool assistant teacher.
Four years ago, teaching preschool gym classes helped spark her interest in this kind of life.
"Kids," she explained, "have always just lit my heart on fire."
Elumba's coaches say they can hardly believe the hours she devoted to worthy causes while also playing and practicing hockey, working 15 hours a week at a part-time job and maintaining a 3.5 grade-point average in pre-med studies.
Neither could her parents, Tito and Debbie Elumba of Chisago City, Minn.
"I don't know how she finds the time to do all this stuff. I just shake my head," said her dad. "And she truly enjoys it."
No surprise, he added.
"The thing about Missy, she's always been very independent, always been very resourceful," he said.
It didn't take long after she enrolled at Northeastern University for the former Park High School (Cottage Grove) three-time hockey captain to make "a complete 180 about where I thought my life was going to go," she said. Quickly, she discovered that God "has bigger plans for me than hockey."
During the Huskies' first practice of her first season, Elumba was the only Minnesotan on an undermanned team and came out determined to demonstrate her hockey prowess. On one of the first drills, she caught a skate in a crevice at the Zamboni entrance and tore up the medial retinaculum in her left knee. Her kneecap slid to the side of her leg and a piece of bone was torn from her femur.
"I had emergency surgery two days later," she said. "They did a scope, because I wanted to continue playing."
The Huskies needed her, Schuler recalled, adding, "That's the type of kid she is, always putting her team and teammates first."
About a month after Elumba returned, the kneecap went offside again. That meant major reconstructive surgery in Minnesota that summer, and it meant Elumba couldn't skate for nine months. She sat out the following season.
"It was absolute torture," she said. "Hockey was my life."
After playing soccer, softball, golf and hockey at Park, Elumba suffered through her first real break from organized sports since taking up hockey in second grade. It opened her eyes.
"I think that's when I realized how much my identity and my worth relied on how I was as a hockey player," she remembered. "I had a hard time finding my place on the team. I didn't feel I had much to contribute at the time."
Feeling low and having difficulty sleeping, Elumba sought solace in church.
"It definitely set my path on serving more, and looking at other people," she recalled. "My role changed."
The injury had excised some of her speed and it never came completely back, so Elumba began to eye hockey in a new way.
"I realized it's not about skill, it's about people," she said.
Raised a Catholic, Elumba was steered to a different church she liked by former Hockey Humanitarian Award winner Sarah Carlson of Boston College. Elumba used a Bible verse to explain it: "I was blind but now I see."
When she came back to hockey, Elumba was a different player and a different person. Although she scored just three goals as a sophomore and one as a junior, she continued to give of herself off the ice and to push for excellence on the ice. As a senior, Flint said, "she emerged," becoming one of the premier penalty-killers on a team that went 12-20-3.
It capped five years at Northeastern that turned out nothing like Elumba envisioned as a Minnesota prep player who considered attending Minnesota, North Dakota and Mercyhurst.
"Here was a local kid who took a path that was other than expected," former Gophers women's coach Laura Halldorson said, "and had impact that goes far beyond hockey."
Elumba will graduate in May but has no plans to slow down. She plans to put off medical school for missionary work in the fall, but first up is coaching at a Cottage Grove hockey development camp this summer.
"Hockey," she said, "will always run in my veins." Consequently, if she ends up working "in the boonies of Africa," she said with a laugh, "I'll have to bring hockey there."
But Elumba refuses to get too far ahead of herself.
"I'm really taking it one day at a time," she said, "because things change all the time."
Hockey Humanitarian Award - Missy Elumba from Cottage Grove
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