Fitzgerald manning the pipes in Marshall, Texas

From The Gananoque Reporter

By Todd Hambleton

 

There are hockey players from Cornwall and area who’ve moved on to places all over the world, to compete at a higher level.

There’s even one who skates in, of all places, rural northeastern Texas, just across the border from Shreveport, La.

Goaltender Tyler Fitzgerald, 23, has been a varsity collegiate athlete for a long time, now halfway into his senior season with the East Texas Baptist University Tigers, in Marshall (population 23,000).

The former Seaway Valley Rapids AA player has been between the pipes for dozens of collegiate games, including 13 of them in 2020-21, when much of the junior and college hockey world was shut down due to the pandemic.

The Tigers skate in the American Collegiate Hockey Association II, and ETBU is 18-2 for the season, riding a 13-game win streak into a long holiday break; the club is back in action Jan. 14 in Denver, competing at the 2022 Mountain Classic.

Fitzgerald, who played a year of junior hockey in Sweden in 2017-18, is not just a goalie at ETBU – he’s been known to take a regular shift sometimes as a forward, and he scored a hat trick in a game at North Texas back in 2018.

In goal, the St. Joseph’s Secondary School graduate has four career collegiate shutouts.

Marshall is the county seat of Harrison County, and considered the cultural and educational hub of the Ark-La-Tex region. The city is known for holding the Wonderland of Lights, one of the largest light festivals in the U.S., which this year has the month-long event wrapping up on Thursday.

Early in December, one of the events as part of the festival had Fitzgerald and his teammates taking to the outdoor rink for Tigers on Ice, which had players signing autographs after their skills clinic demonstration.

(Originally published at https://www.gananoquereporter.com/opinion/columnists/away-games-fitzgerald-manning-the-pipes-in-marshall-texas)