Born to coach: Long career leads Orr to IU

For Tom Orr, hockey was part of growing up.

As a small child on a farm in Ypsilanti, N.D., Orr watched his uncle play hockey, which was the spark that began his life in the sport. By the age of 3, he was playing in a youth league.

He played other sports in high school, including baseball, football and tennis. Still, he always seemed to come back to hockey.

In 1997, he tried out for the North Dakota hockey team. Up against future professionals, the 18-year-old freshman missed the cut. The team went on to win a national championship that year without Orr – now coach of the IU club hockey team – and would add another championship and runner-up in the years after that.

As shattering as that experience might have been for many, the good-spirited coach doesn’t show signs of regret.

“It’d always be nice to start out showing people championship rings,” Orr said, laughing. “I probably got dropped from the hardest class to make, so it wasn’t too negative of an experience. I had been on the cusp of playing on one of the best teams in the country.”

Orr’s career was only beginning.

After missing the cut at North Dakota, he played for the Red River Rockets, a junior-league team in Canada. He continued school at North Dakota, earning a degree in history. He would drive to Canada to play in the rough-and-tumble league, where players fought for a chance to get to the next level.

Players in the league were required to wear the sticker of their national flag on their helmet – Orr was one of few bearing the stars and stripes.

This would lead to problems. In one game, Orr was struck in the face. He fell, dizzy, and when he looked up, he saw blood all over the ice. His teammate, a 6-foot-8, 270-pound defender, began fighting the player who hit him in retaliation.

“He was an OK hockey player, but he was there for one reason: To make sure the little American with him didn’t get injured,” Orr said. “My mom came to that game, and I looked up at my mom and my mom looked at me on the ice, and I think that was actually the last game my mom wanted to come to. We spent the whole day driving around Canada to get emergency care.

“It wasn’t the mom’s weekend we thought it would be.”

Orr has been on the other end of such encounters as well.

Once, an opponent pushed him from behind. Orr turned around and punched him, knocking the player unconscious and eventually sending him to the hospital.

“There was a chance that I would actually be banned from the country of Canada for it,” he said with nervous laughter. “At points like that, you kind of reflect on the overall violence of the sport.”

Despite the incident, for which he was suspended five games, he won the award for “most gentlemanly player” that year. When Orr came to IU, he decided to study sports violence. After finishing his undergraduate work at North Dakota, he came to Bloomington in 2001 to work on his master’s degree in park and recreation administration.

Orr’s teaching career began at IU in 2003. As he works for his Ph.D. in leisure behavior, he teaches two classes this semester as an adjunct: leadership and sport programming.

Aside from playing in Canada, Orr later returned to hockey in the United States. This time, it was at IU, where he played for three years before becoming an assistant once his playing days were over. Last year, as an assistant coach, Orr saw his team go all the way to the Division II national chamapionship game.

The Hoosiers won a difficult tie-breaking game against Michigan to get to that final. Though they lost the title game to Davenport 5-2, the team was able to turn a lot of heads in the hockey world.

This is Orr’s first season as the Hoosiers’ coach, and he looks forward to matching last year’s success.

Orr sees himself teaching classes for years down the road. He doesn’t know how long he will be involved with the hockey team, but said he hopes he can turn it into a Division I team at some point.

Orr spends most of his free time with his family.

He coaches his first son Lyndon’s youth hockey and baseball teams. Even at age 5, Lyndon has already been playing hockey for three years, and the younger Orr can be seen at many of the Hoosiers’ home games at the Frank Southern Ice Arena. Orr’s wife was a captain of the North Dakota women’s hockey team, and also played hockey for the Minnesota Golden Gophers.

Hockey runs in the family.

Despite the fact he no longer plays hockey, Orr said he feels like he’s met many of his goals and is grateful to still be around the game.

“I just want to be able to help young athletes and give back,” Orr said.