Cedar Rapids RoughRiders reach into Hungary for defenseman

CEDAR RAPIDS - When you think Hungarian, you probably think goulash first. Hockey comes, well, nowhere.

But kids like Bence Stipsicz are trying to change that.

The 19-year-old defenseman from Budapest was one of the survivors of the weekend's Cedar Rapids RoughRiders tryout camp at the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena. There are a couple more hoops he must jump through, so to speak, to make it to 2016 opening night, but he's on his way.

'It was a great experience, coming from Europe, coming from what I'm used to back home,” Stipsicz said. 'But, overall, I think I did OK, and I had a lot of fun. The guys were really helpful with everything.”

United States Hockey League clubs search high and low, use every possible connection to procure talent, and that's what the RoughRiders did in this case. Stipsicz was a teammate of former Rider D-man Kevin Wehrs on Hungary's national team at the recent IIHF World Championships in Russia.

He wants to play college hockey and has had contact with Western Michigan, whose coach, Andy Murray, was at the Ice Arena for Sunday's camp all-star game finale. Stipsicz had a choice between being here or at Omaha's simultaneous camp.

'There were two camps at the same time, and I knew Kevin Wehrs played here,” Stipsicz said. 'He said it's the best program in the USHL, and that's how I made my decision to come here ... I thought this would be a better fit for me. I had a chance to talk to Coach (Mark) Carlson. I thought this would be best.”

Wehrs, by the way, is a native Minnesotan who plays for a Hungarian club team which is part of a league in Austria.

Stipsicz speaks flawless English thanks to living in the United States with his parents as a toddler, second-grader, fifth-grader and ninth-grader. He said hockey is becoming a larger and larger deal in his home country.

'Hockey wasn't really big 10 years ago,” he said. 'It was a really small sport. There were, like, 700 grown-up players. Now there are something like 3,000. There was a big push when we first got promoted to the (World Championships) ‘A' pool in 2008. A lot of kids started to play hockey. We've seen the effects of that. We've got more and more kids playng, and hockey's getting really popular. I know in a couple of years, there are going to be a lot of Hungarian players all over the world.”

Seventy-five players took part in tryout camp, which began Thursday. There were 40 guys picked for Sunday's game, including 2015-16 RoughRiders Ben Foley, Will Garin, Sam Sternschein, Zack LaRocque, Trevor Zins, Taylor Brierley, Pavel Tkachkov, Zac Robbins and Justin Cole.

Defenseman Riese Zmolek and forwards Liam Walsh, Johnny DeRoche and Matt Gosiewski also are eligible to return this coming season but did not participate because of injury. The list of which players the Riders are keeping USHL rights to at this point has become a well-guarded secret over recent years and wasn't immediately available.

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