Opening Doors To Hockey Opportunity

Providing local youth with access to ball hockey and other sports is just the latest way Andrew Bloom has furthered his life in athletics while helping others begin theirs.

The Kraken social impact and youth access manager is a onetime University of Idaho track athlete excelling in long sprint races for a team that captured four Western Athletic Conference outdoor and indoor championships. He immediately took up coaching upon graduation, first for two years as a volunteer assistant track coach at Seattle University and then as a graduate assistant upon returning to Idaho for a master’s degree in movement science with an emphasis on sports psychology.

Not long after completing his postgraduate studies, the Kraken were launching their debut season and Walla Walla native Bloom, 34, saw an opportunity to expand the type of community work in sports he’d already been doing.

“Definitely, for me, it was the opportunity to join a team that was brand new to Seattle,” Bloom said. “It was a team that was hitting the ground running. Building things from the ground up.”

Indeed, Bloom now spearheads Kraken efforts to bring ball hockey programs to schools across the Puget Sound. His work with the team’s One Roof Foundation charity wing has also helped increase youth activity across multiple sports, a prime example being his spearheading the May opening of the 5,000-square-foot Verlo Sport Court in Tacoma now used for ball hockey, basketball and a version of soccer known as futsal.

“I went to school thinking I wanted to be a coach, either work in track with high performance athletes or do more of what I’m doing now and work more in the youth sports space and just focus on youth development,” Bloom said. “I’ve always been drawn to getting kids moving, because so many don’t have that opportunity. Across communities, we see kids dropping out of sports or never getting the chance to start in the first place. Whether it’s cost, equipment, or other barriers. For me, that was always the driving force. I knew I could take a few different paths, but I chose this one because it gives me a way to help level the playing field.”

It helped that Bloom had already started working for Upower, a Seattle-based non-profit that focuses on bringing sports and physical activity to underserved King County youth inside alternative high schools and juvenile detention centers. The Kraken were known as NHL Seattle back in those pre-pandemic days and the team’s fledgling community wing had reached out to Upower to explore starting up some local ball hockey programs.

Bloom got back to them about wanting sticks and other equipment, and the relationship grew. And when the team officially launched its One Roof Foundation just ahead of the Kraken debut 2021-22 season, with Youth Access to sports as one of three main community pillars, Bloom saw a natural fit.

“I don’t have a strong hockey background, but I have a really strong sense of the youth sports landscape in Seattle,” Bloom said. “Especially when it comes to running the non-profit space.”

As with Upower, his primary role became keeping kids active. This time, though, it was centered around hockey above all.

“It shows kids and families that hockey doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. If you can get a stick in your hands and use the spaces already in your neighborhood, like a basketball court, you can play hockey,” Bloom said. “And we’ve also seen teachers and other youth sports leaders lean into it.”

Bloom knows firsthand that a little help in sports can sometimes go a long way. While competing in track for Walla Walla High School, he’d been a good runner but never made it out of his highly competitive district to qualify for state championships. Thus, he didn’t have any college scholarship opportunities.

But his high school coach, Eric Hisaw, had played quarterback and been a sprinter at the University of Idaho in the mid-1990s and knew Wayne Phipps, the school’s track coach. Hisaw introduced the two, and Bloom was given a chance to join the Vandals as a walk-on.

By his junior year in 2013, Bloom had shaved nearly four seconds off his prior high school times in the 400 meters and ran a personal best 47.72 seconds to qualify for that year’s NCAA Div. 1 outdoor championships in Austin, Texas. But a nagging hamstring injury kept him from of his preliminary heat and dogged him the rest of his racing career. Nonetheless, as a senior in 2014, four-year letterman Bloom received a conference Athlete of the Week honor and later placed second in the 400m event at the WAC Indoor Championships with a time of 47.90 seconds while also taking second in the conference as part of Idaho’s 4x400m relay team.

Now, the same way that walk-on chance at Idaho prolonged his racing days to heights he’d never imagined possible, Bloom strives to continue opening hockey doors for much younger athletes who otherwise wouldn’t participate.

“I feel like my role is really about breaking down the barriers that have kept so many kids and families from seeing themselves in hockey,” Bloom said. “By bringing sticks into schools and sport courts to neighborhoods and community spaces, we’re making the game feel accessible, not just something that happens on the ice. And when those same kids and families visit the Kraken Community Iceplex to skate or Climate Pledge Arena for their first game, it feels like the game finally belongs to them too. It’s really very rewarding.”