When Bradshaw isn’t at the rink, he works as a high school special education teacher where he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and has been involved as a special education teacher for two decades. While his job as an educator and an his job as an official are generally separate, Bradshaw says he often takes a similar approach both on and off the ice.
“This is about these individuals and their experience with it. I think just carrying from the classroom that understanding of how this is a positive experience for them and how it’s going to impact them in their lives is really important.â€
Additionally, Bradshaw discussed the importance of continued awareness for disabled hockey, especially for disciplines like blind hockey, which he noted is one of his favorite disciplines to officiate. Blind hockey requires adapted blind hockey pucks, which cost around $50 each and can add a lot more accrued costs to the sport.
“That’s the sort of stuff that’s going to have a huge impact,†said Bradshaw.
Over the course of the season, Bradshaw works everything from high school, college, youth, travel, junior hockey games in addition to his full-time job as a teacher. He said that the Disabled Hockey Festival is always an event he looks forward to towards the end of a busy season.
“Sometimes through the grind of a season, you start to lose some of that passion game by game, but then you get to an event like this and everybody here is just about the participation and having fun. You see them go out there and compete and there is a definitely the competitive element, but at the end of the day it’s about having fun.
“That doesn’t get lost throughout this event. Win or lose, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen two teams take pictures after the game and you just don’t see that in regular season youth hockey. So that is part of what makes this special.â€
