Andrew Groombridge was working - or at least trying to.
His team was playing in a fastball tournament in Perth, Ont., but Groombridge was having to deal with a fan who kept trying to engage him in conversation.
“He didn’t shut up all weekend. He just kept talking,” Groombridge said. “At one point he said, ‘Are you looking for a hockey job in the winter?’”
Anyone who has worked with Groombridge would know he takes his job very seriously, and distracting him during a game might not be the best way to endear yourself to him. Focused on his current job, Groombridge didn’t even bother getting the fan’s number.
The fan, Norm Lockhurst, a member of the Georgetown Raiders’ board, was persistent though. Two weeks later Groombridge got a call out of the blue from Raiders’ general manager Jack Moon offering him a job as the team’s trainer and equipment manager.
There was one catch. Groombridge would be in Arizona for a tournament when the Raiders opened training camp. Moon told him that was fine, and Groombridge accepted the job.
“I got off the plane and was here the next day,” he says from 12x12-foot room in the Mold-Masters SportsPlex that has become his second home. “I came for one year and I’m still here 24 years later.”
Groombridge has been the one constant with the team over the past two decades. He has worked under five different ownerships during that time, quite remarkable given that new owners typically bring in their own staff when they purchase a team.
“I try to run it professionally,” said Groombridge, who worked his 1,500th game with the team this past season. “You try to teach the kids the way things are, how it’s set up so they know when they move on to the next level, and hopefully they listen.”
Someone has been paying attention. Groombridge was named the Ontario Junior Hockey League’s Equipment Manager of the Year. It’s the second time he’s been honoured by the league, having won the inaugural Trainer of the Year award in 2012.
Groombridge got his start helping out with his high school football team while growing up in Sarnia. He went on to work for the Point Edwards Pacers lacrosse team, which won back-to-back national Jr. B championships.
And while it was a love of sports that led him to working with teams, those victories early in his career fuelled a competitive nature.
“I’m old school,” he said. “I still like to win. Winning is so enjoyable.”
And he’s had his share of victories. He would add a third Founders Cup with the Halton Hills Bulldogs in 2010. In between, he added two more Canadian championships in softball with the St. Thomas Centennials. He was also a member of three world champion fastball teams with the Toronto Gators. And, of course, he was part of the Raiders’ Dudley Hewitt Cup (Central Ontario) championship team in 2005.
And while Raider fans will see Groombridge doing his job during the game, what they don’t see is the work he puts in before and after games. He arrives four to five hours before a game and when the final buzzer sounds, he stays as long as arena staff will allow, doing laundry, patching sweaters, fixing equipment before returning the next morning to finish.
“There’s always work to do,” he said. “The season’s been done for two weeks and I’m still doing hockey stuff.”
And for more than two decades, the Raiders have had little to worry about except performing on the ice knowing they have one of the best in the business looking after things behind the scenes.
