{"id":100742,"date":"2025-12-19T06:12:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T06:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/100742\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T06:12:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T06:12:10","slug":"san-jose-barracuda-all-roads-lead-to-san-jose-for-sommer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/100742\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose Barracuda | ALL ROADS LEAD TO SAN JOSE FOR SOMMER"},"content":{"rendered":"

On January 10 at Tech CU Arena, the San Jose Barracuda will honor their legendary former head coach Roy Sommer<\/a> with a pregame ceremony and banner raising. The night will also include a replica banner giveaway for the first 2,500 fans, and the team will wear specialty San Jose Rhinos jerseys<\/a>, representing the now-defunct professional roller hockey team that Sommer coached for two seasons and led to a league championship in 1995.<\/p>\n

Notable alumni will be in attendance, and before warmups there will be a ceremony honoring Roy and his family, chronicling his historic AHL coaching career.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ran into Joe (Will)<\/a>,\u201d Roy recounts. \u201cHe came up and said, \u2018We\u2019re gonna do a special night for you\u2026 raise a banner.\u2019 And I was going like, \u2018What? For what?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The AHL\u2019s all-time winningest coach<\/a> and a 2024 AHL Hall of Famer, the night may have been a surprise for the \u201cCowboy,\u201d but it shouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an honor,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t really notice all the years that have gone by until it\u2019s done. I raised my family as a Shark. They\u2019ve always known teal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roy\u2019s story begins in Oakland, where is unlikely passion started a young child playing out of Berkley Ice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never imagined it would come back full circle,\u201d he says. \u201cWe used to drive through San Jose to visit my grandparents in Ben Lomond, and it was all cherry orchards. Who would’ve thought they\u2019d put a team in San Jose?\u201d<\/p>\n

He worked around the old California Golden Seals<\/a>, Northern California\u2019s first NHL franchise, even acting as a visiting stick boy and helping relay goal information through ticker tape before computers.<\/p>\n

In the mid-90s, Doug Wilson called Roy with an offer that sounded more like a summer adventure than a career move:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to come out and coach roller hockey?\u201d<\/p>\n

Roy had never coached roller hockey in his life, so he called a friend, Chris McSorley<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cChris goes, \u2018It\u2019s a blast. Three-month gig. Guys on rollerblades.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

So Roy jumped into the International Roller Hockey League with the San Jose Rhinos<\/a>,<\/p>\n

having tapes mailed to him just to learn the rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably the best move I ever made,\u201d he admits now.<\/p>\n

Little did he know that roller hockey would lead to an interview with the Sharks, then an assistant coaching job, and eventually the start of a 24-year run behind the bench for San Jose\u2019s AHL affiliates: Kentucky<\/a>, Cleveland<\/a>, Worcester,<\/a> and finally, back home to San Jose.<\/p>\n

Before he ever coached, Roy played, and won everywhere he went. A Calder Cup champion. An IHL champion. A stint in the NHL where the California kid scored a goal while sharing the ice with Wayne Gretzky<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But coaching became his life.<\/p>\n

The spark started by a pool in Jamaica, when his coach in Muskegon asked if he\u2019d ever considered moving behind the bench.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s kind of how I started coaching,\u201d Roy says simply.<\/p>\n

Since then, he\u2019s coached more than 150 players who graduated to the NHL, something he considers the true legacy of his career.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the American League, if you\u2019re kicking 2, 3, 4 guys up a year, you\u2019re doing your job. And that\u2019s what we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

He prided himself on being honest, even when it was hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t lie to them, then you never have to lie to them,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

His famous \u201c10-game meetings\u201d became part of the culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d say, \u2018Throw anything on the wall, if it sticks, we\u2019ll work with it.\u2019 Sometimes guys would tell me something I never knew about them. One guy said, \u2018I\u2019m a net-front guy.\u2019 I put him there and he ended up with 25 goals. Another said, \u2018I don\u2019t want to be on the power play, I like killing penalties.\u2019 And he became a great penalty killer.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Roy, the best part was always the people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what I miss the most, the interaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ask Roy about his career, and he\u2019ll immediately point to the person who made it possible: his wife, Melissa.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, I don\u2019t think I\u2019d be sitting here without her,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

She built her own career, special education teacher, now a coordinator at Flathead Community College, while supporting every move, every city, every late night on a bus.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe never got tenure anywhere because we were always moving, but she\u2019s an excellent teacher,\u201d Roy says with pride. \u201cShe ran the household while I was on the road. She sacrificed a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

His daughter, Kira, recently married in Brooklyn, will be there on January 10 with her husband.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s real happy right now,\u201d Roy smiles. \u201cIt\u2019ll be fun having her out here.\u201d<\/p>\n

His son, Caston, is now a rising coaching star of his own, already thriving at Quinnipiac after successful stops in the NCAA and WHL.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s way smarter than I was,\u201d Roy jokes. \u201cHe soaked everything in. He\u2019s done it all on his own.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Mo, Roy\u2019s constant shadow and the heart of every locker room he entered.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s probably put on 750,000 miles on a bus with me,\u201d Roy laughs. \u201cPlayers love him. They don\u2019t even ask about me, they ask about Mo.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Legacy Raised to the Rafters On January 10, the Barracuda will wear specialty Rhinos jerseys, another full-circle nod to Roy\u2019s journey. Former players will return. Fans will cheer. And in the new state-of-the-art Tech CU Arena, Roy\u2019s name will rise permanently above the ice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All roads lead back to San Jose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On January 10 at Tech CU Arena, the San Jose Barracuda will honor their legendary former head coach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89,3097],"class_list":["post-100742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-sharks-ahl-hockey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}