Sherman brothers have found hockey heaven in the most unlikely of places

Josh Sherman didn’t travel halfway across the globe in search of an ice hockey paradise.

The Exeter grad was looking for an adventure, a chance to grow, and the opportunity to teach abroad when he relocated to Thailand four years ago. The hockey part turned out to be a bonus.

Neither he nor younger brother Jack, who soon followed him to southeast Asia, ever imagined their lives would be so intertwined with the sport they fell in love with as kids and first played on the street outside their Pennside home.

Now they coach or play the game every day in a tropical town nearly 9,000 miles away from Emerald Street, where they first learned to handle a stick.

They’re sharing the hockey knowledge they gleaned growing up watching the Philadelphia Flyers, and later playing with the Reading Junior Royals and on the club team at Kutztown University.

“It’s our hockey paradise,” said Jack, 26 and a KU grad. “It’s the perfect lifestyle: You can play hockey every day.”

Josh, 30, is an administrator at the Americana Chinese International School in Chiangmai, a city in the mountainous, northern-most corner of the country.

Jack manages the ice hockey rink in Chiangmai, gives private hockey lessons and, along with Josh, coaches the local teams.

Last year their Under-18 team won the national championship. A year earlier their Under-14 team won a national championship.

“That was a big deal, to put our program on the map,” Josh said.

Ice hockey, as you might imagine, is not big in Thailand, where the average daily high is 90 degrees much of the year.

There are only a handful of rinks in a country nearly the size of Spain and with a population of 70,000,000.

Soccer, basketball and volleyball are the most popular team sports. Golf is huge, too; Thailand has become a popular destination for golfers throughout Southeast Asia.

Hockey is foreign sport in the truest sense of the word. Kids don’t grow up playing because there aren’t games to watch on TV, nor many available facilities where they can practice or learn the games. Plus, it’s expensive; only kids from wealthy families get exposed to the sport.

“It’s a niche (sport), for sure,” said Josh. “It’s super-expensive, even by Western standards. Your average Thai family doesn’t have the money to spend (on equipment and securing ice time). It can cost $500 a month to be part of the team.”

Josh, who has master’s degrees from Temple and Kutztown U, didn’t know there was a rink in Chiangmai when he accepted a job at the school in 2018. The area is known for its historic temples, cloud-topped mountains and scenic views — not for ice sports. He stumbled upon the rink — located in a mall — after arriving, asked if anyone ever played hockey and was invited to join pick-up games.

After the locals saw him perform and realized he knew the sport he was asked him to give lessons to the local kids. Eventually, he was asked to coach the youth team.

“I had no idea about the hockey community (in Chiangmai),” Josh said. “My (initial) plan was to (work at the school) a year or two, then come back (home).”

Once he got involved in the local hockey scene, then recruited Jack to join him, those plans changed. Now both say they never want to leave.

“At first, it seemed so far away,” said Jack, who had spent a couple weeks in Thailand with Josh during a 2017 sightseeing trip. “It was culture shock; it was difficult for me to find comfort in it. (Once I moved), I immediately got into the hockey scene. I started doing lessons and practices. . . I’m never leaving.”

Language is not a barrier, they said. Most people they encounter speak English. They love the local food; the diet of rice, noodles, vegetables and meat, prepared with local spices, is healthy and has proved to be beneficial. Jack says he’s lost 20 pounds since arrival.

Mostly there’s the chance to immerse themselves in a sport they’ve loved since they were kids. Josh played baseball in high school; nothing, he says, comes close to being on the ice.

“Once you’re on skates, nothing really compares to hockey,” he said. “The speed and the uniqueness of it . . . you can’t move that fast in other sports.”

He and Jack have been pleasantly surprised by the talent level among the young players they’re working with.

“You wouldn’t expect a kid growing up in southeast Asia to have really clean skating ability, good stick-handling ability, a wicked shot,” he said. “When we showed up a lot of these kids were naturally gifted athletes who clearly had the coaching to develop their raw skill set.

“What we noticed is that their hockey IQ was almost non-existent. What we were able to bring to the table was showing them how to work in a system, play team-oriented hockey where you’re defending as a unit instead of everything being one-on-one.”

Josh is the head coach and more of the strategist; he focuses on the forwards, the position he played. Jack is the assistant coach, specializes in working on skill development and focuses on the defensive end, where he played.

“I was lucky growing up to have incredible coaches who knew how to manage games,” said Josh, pointing to former Reading Royal Antoine Bergeron in particular. “My (hockey) IQ grew under him; that’s the foundation of the system I have in place.”

Whatever they’re doing is working. Jack says their team hasn’t lost a tournament game in two years, and players from Bangkok — the country’s largest city and a hockey hotbed, if there is such a thing — are traveling to Chiangmai to work with the Shermans.

“It’s getting to the point, the Bangkok players want to play on our team,” Jack said. “Everybody’s starting to understand that Josh and I know how to prepare these kids for tournaments.”

Josh misses family, and being so far from home for such extended periods (he wasn’t able to return for nearly 18 months following the COVID-19 outbreak).

Jack misses stuffed pretzels and the change in seasons; every day in Thailand is virtually the same year-round.

Their parents, Lori and Barry — he’s been officiating high basketball games for 40 years, and rooting for the Flyers for even longer — wish their sons were a little closer to home but understand the pull hockey has on them.

“They’re just happy that we’re together and playing the sport we love,” said Jack, “and that we’re teaching it to kids that typically don’t have a coach who knows what they’re doing. They’re sad about the distance but they know how happy we are and how much we’re enjoying our lives.”