Fried Sets Up Summer Camp

There are those people you meet at Harvard who do so many things so well, and for so many of the right reasons, that you don’t know whether to strike up a conversation with them or just stand in awe of their existence.

Senior Rob Fried is an assistant captain on the men’s hockey team. He is a varsity lacrosse letterwinner. He writes side-splitting stories for Satire V. He collaborated on a script that was submitted to the Pudding. Oh, and he’s also a two-year ECAC all-academic selection in hockey.

So yeah, he’s one of those people.

After all, how many 22-year-olds do you know who have pulled off the scholar-athlete-humorist hat trick? Fried is the kind of guy you thought existed only in economic models. He has an aversion to leisure and insanely high productivity.

“We literally have to beg him to relax,” said senior captain Kenny Smith, Fried’s blockmate. “He’s just an awesome kid, the hardest-working kid I’ve ever met.”

So last summer—when, you know, he was supposed to chill out a little—Fried combined his hard-working mentality with his creativity and Zamboni-sized heart to create the Crimson City Hockey Clinic, a free, nine-week program at Quincy Youth Arena for underprivileged youths, ages 10 and under.

“You’re in your summertime, you want to enjoy your summer, and what does he do? Create more work for himself,” laughed Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni. “It takes a special individual to do that.”

For his efforts Fried became one of 14 nominees for the Hockey Humanitarian Award, awarded to college hockey’s finest citizen. Fried was not on the list of five finalists announced last month, but as Smith said, “he wasn’t doing that for the recognition.”

“I did this out of a sense of duty, really,” Fried said humbly. “Growing up, I remember meeting kids who played college hockey. I still remember their names, and this is 10, 15 years ago. I remember how important it was to see those people and meet them, and make that connection.

“It was an honor to be on that list [of nominees], with so many well-qualified people on there. I’m just very happy people volunteered their time, effort and financial resources to make the clinic a success.”

Fried said he got the idea for the camp by talking with kids from the Allston-Brighton area who attended Harvard games. Fried asked them, “All right guys. Who’s going to win the Beanpot this year?”

One kid said BC. Another said BU. “I thought for sure we’d be the next one,” Fried recalled, smiling. “But nope: ‘The Huskies.’”

Fried thought of the hockey clinic as a way of increasing Harvard hockey’s exposure in Greater Boston while helping kids less fortunate than him pursue hockey.

“You don’t have to come from a very wealthy background to become a hockey player and play college hockey, and I think a lot of people forget that,” he said. “There are scholarships out there, and if you work hard enough, you can earn them.”

Fried called youth coaches in Dorchester, South Boston, Hyde Park and Quincy and asked for the names of kids who couldn’t afford summer hockey camp.

“Whoever wanted to come, it was first come, first served,” Fried said. “We had a pretty good wait-list by the end of it.”

With the interest there, Fried still needed to find the money. Hockey camps typically cost $350 to $400 a week because of ice time, insurance and mass mailings. Fried was trying to do this free of charge for everyone. Fortunately, he applied for and received a grant through the Harvard Club of Boston. In addition to this initial funding, Harvard hockey alumni and other private citizens also donated money to the camp.

But that didn’t take care of all the costs. Fried still needed to find proper equipment for the campers at little or no cost to them. Since new skates are in the neighborhood of $300 to $350, and goalie pads up to $1,000, members of both the Harvard men’s and women’s hockey teams donated old equipment from their basements. Fried then took the used equipment to Play It Again Sports and exchanged it for youth sizes and sold them to the kids for essentially nothing. Five bucks for skates, two for shin pads.

In the end, Fried had enough money for nine time slots on Friday nights and enrolled 90 kids, divided into three sessions of 30 players. The camp counseling, facilitated by 11 current and former Harvard players, proved to be the easiest part.

“Ninety percent of the work was off the ice, getting insurance and all of that stuff,” Fried said. “It was great when Friday night rolled around and we actually met the kids.”

Those nine Friday nights were the reward for everyone involved.

“Their eyes lit up when we got to the rink,” said Smith, one of the counselors. “To see the kids excited and the parents excited was a great feeling for all of us. You know those experiences at a young age mean a lot.”

And all of it—right down to the shoelaces on the used size-five Tacks—came courtesy of Fried. You could say he was the founder, president, CEO, CFO, general manager and head coach of this outfit. In fact, the Crimson City Hockey Clinic might become a non-profit organization in the official sense. Yesterday Fried filed paperwork with the IRS in hopes of achieving tax-exempt status.

Fried is planning for the clinic’s future, and hopes junior Rob Flynn and others will help keep the camp going this summer.

“It’s extremely important to get role models in front of the kids,” Fried said. “Everyone has some older kid they met at a camp that made them want to pursue their dream.”

Meanwhile, Fried has continued to live his college hockey dream and played arguably his best game of the season in Friday’s comeback win at Yale. That night, Mazzoleni said the Crimson’s sizeable second line (Fried, Dennis Packard and Brendan Bernakevitch) “absolutely manhandled” the Elis.

Fried is down to six more regular-season games at Harvard. You can bet he’ll play them like the 116 before. “One hundred miles per hour,” Smith said, “all the time.

“Anything he undertakes—school, hockey, the charity work he does—he goes all out, all the time,” Smith continued. “He’s just that type of kid. You want him on your team, in your business. Anything you do in life, you want him on your side.”

Mazzoleni calls Fried “one of the finest individuals that represents Harvard as a student-athlete.” That’s lofty praise considering his peers, but there are 90 kids in town who would probably tell you the same thing.

—Staff writer Jon Paul Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.