Marty York Assingment: Player Profile

Some Canadian children are born into a world that revolves around hockey.

Zachary Paul Zwarych was born December 16, 1993, the third of three boys and fourth of six children, into a family that eat, breathes and sleeps hockey.

Zach's initial interest in hockey started much like any other young boy who lives in the Toronto area, with a love of the Toronto Maple Leafs. He showed great progress in his ability on the ice at a young age from skating around on the backyard rink and public skating at the local arena.

He first delved into the the sport at the age of five, when his father enrolled him into Tim Horton's hockey. Tim Hortons hockey or the Timbits Minor Sports Program is a community program for local sports teams involving children aged four to eight. The program places an emphasis on learning the sport and building friendships among the participants, as reflected in the program's advertising tagline—"The First Goal is Having Fun." Zach excelled in these ranks and show a lot of promise in his hockey playing abilities.

Zachary started playing in an organized league at the age of seven. While playing house league hockey he competed hard and was more then often the better player on the ice.

Later on into his playing career he established a high skill level and love for the position of goalie. In his first full of year of playing goalie, he posted an impressive record of 16-2 record which included eight shutouts and only one game where he allowed more then two goals against. These impressive credentials earned him a call up to his local rep team, the Ajax Knights, where he has been ever since.

The Knights are just finishing their second season with Zachary as their number one goalie. In this past year, Zachary backstopped the Knights to a 25-2-3 record for the top in their league. Unfortunately, the team was defeated in the second round of the playoffs by the Pickering Panthers in the fifth game in a five game series.

When asked about how he is dealing with the defeat, he said, "It sucks. Its hard losing to a team you know is worse then you, we beat them all season. But in the playoffs we just didn't show up. Its disappointing."

However, Zachary is looking forward to upcoming tournament's in Ajax and Stouffville. "We're going to do better in the tournaments. There is only one team to look out for and that is Whitby, we tied in the regular season. Other then that we should have no problem owning the tourny's."

Many Ajax natives look forward to seeing how Zachary progress' as a hockey stud, much like they watched Minnesota Wild's Brent Burns. It's not hard to believe that one day you may watch on TV or hear on the radio...holy moly! what a goalie that Zachary Zwarych is.