Though unemployed, Rob Kasperek tries to keep his head up. He soothes his psyche at least twice a week by playing ice hockey, a decidedly difficult sport for the handicapped.
Kasperek was 12 when he lost his left hand in a fireworks accident, and while that hindered his development in sports, it didn’t stop him from picking up ice hockey as a young adult.
Without a prosthetic hand, which he only uses to tie his skates, Kasperek, 31, plays the game remarkably well. He lodges the end of his stick against the inside of his elbow, between his biceps and forearm. His slap shots are accurate, and his one-armed defensive skills are formidable.
Perhaps the only skill the Castle Rock resident lacks is patience with unfamiliar players.
“Playing with new people, they usually treat me like I’m not that good,” said Kasperek, who plays drop-in hockey at South Suburban Ice Arena and the University of Denver.
“They look up, see me, and pass to the other guy.”
After a fireworks show July 4, 1987, in East Aurora, N.Y., which is southeast of Buffalo, Kasperek and his friends spotted what appeared to be an unused candle left by the pros. After returning home, Kasperek lit the device, which was actually the bottom half of a powerful unused explosive, and his hand was blown to pieces.
Doctors amputated what remained of his hand at the wrist.
“The way I always looked at it, especially because it happened when I was young, was that however I needed to adapt, I would do so,” Kasperek said.
“I learned to overanalyze things, figure out a way to compensate, and go do what I have to do.”
He began playing ice hockey in 1998 at age 23 in Davie, Fla., after learning how to use in-line skates.
“I just picked up roller blading, and decided that if I was going to play hockey, I was going to do it on the ice,” Kasperek said. “I pretty much never had any doubts in anything I wanted to do. I just had to adapt.
“And I just never thought very hard about (using a prosthetic). I figured, ‘Why bother?’ The only thing I really needed help was to tie my laces. If I can’t do it the way it’s supposed to be done, I don’t want to do it.”
Mark Hancock is a hand amputee who plays hockey with the Centennial-based Mallards Hockey Club. Hancock, 45, took up the game five years ago and now uses a custom prosthetic from Therapeutic Recreation Systems in Boulder.
“Before I heard of the guy in Boulder I was just kind of jerry-rigging something together, and it was always coming apart,” said Hancock, who shoots left and has his right-hand prosthetic attached to the top of his stick. “The prosthetic made a big difference. I could hold the hockey stick a lot better.”
Kasperek and Hancock, who never have met, competed internationally briefly for the American Amputee Hockey Association, a program of Colorado Springs-based USA Hockey. Kasperek left the league because it was expensive.
Jobless since moving to Colorado from Florida in the fall, Kasperek, who has a degree in biology, can’t afford to play in a men’s league. But he’s gaining respect throughout the lunchtime and evening drop-in hockey sessions.
“He’s somebody that took this game up later in life. That’s pretty special in itself,” said Thompson Smith, who coordinates the private skates at South Suburban. “But to have a handicap of this nature and pick up the sport as an adult says a lot about who this guy is, and his passion for the game.
“Most of the guys who jump on the ice with him they don’t immediately realize his handicap.”
Staff writer Mike Chambers can be reached at 303-820-5453 or mchambers@denverpost.com.
