Off Hours: Mike Grady

On the ice, Mike Grady is known as a good passer. At work at the Annenberg Institute, he's also known as one of 13 volunteers who read once a week to children at a Providence elementary school through the Power Lunch program.

by Kate Bramson

Mike Grady's colleagues at Brown's Annenberg Institute for School Reform have joked about becoming spectators of his late-night hobby: ice hockey. But Grady's not counting on any long-term fans: His adult league typically takes the ice at 10:40 p.m.

The only people who tend to go to the games are girlfriends and fiancees of his teammates, Grady says with a smile.

He had a regular fan when he joined the Hockey North America league in 1993, but Jennifer Miller, now Grady's wife, doesn't make it to many games now.

"They try to make one game a year, but the late starts are tough," Grady said of Miller and the couple's two girls, 6-year-old Emily and 3-year-old Julia. His wife is, he says gratefully,"enormously patient with this."

This — the hockey career he picked up when soccer injuries became too common — is a side of him that Grady says would surprise his colleagues who aren't aware of his hockey nights. For Grady, the deputy director of the Annenberg Institute, hockey's an outlet,"a lark."

"It's designed for characters like me," he said.

An avid sportsman, he had played soccer since fifth-grade. But since soccer players wear much less protective gear than hockey players, he grew tired of soccer injuries. It helps that Hockey North America does not allow body-checking.

Grady will never forget where he learned to play ice hockey. It was the winter of 1993, a year with record cold temperatures. As a beginner in the league, he was assigned to 10 weeks of instruction in White Plains, New York — on an outdoor rink.

"You had to want it profoundly," he said of the hockey experience that winter.

He stuck with the league even as he moved from Connecticut and that White Plains team to Baltimore and then to Rhode Island two years ago. Wearing number 18, he plays right wing.

He has had a couple injuries over the years, but Grady, who notes that he just celebrated his 47^th birthday, says the average recovery time after a game isn't as long as it was from soccer.

Grady's team — the Providence Leafs — plays once a week from early October to mid-March. If they qualify for Hockey North America's annual tournament in Canada, they'll practice through mid-June.

Their first season — last year — wasn't great until the end. Invited to the season-end tournament in Toronto as a new team, the Leafs tasted their first victory. They went on to win their division.

Although Grady says he drags a little after his weekly game, the good news is that the sport doesn't cut into family time."I get into the car at 10," Grady said about game nights."We've read to the kids and the kids are OK."