Josh Ho-Sang, PEAC Hockey Player, featured in the Toronto Star 
Ken Strong, Joshua’s coach with the Marlies, calls him “probably the most dynamic, skilled player in the province, if not the country.”
Starhttp://www.thestar.com/article/1073889—feschuk-toronto-teenager-the-elite-of-the-elite
More than 15 years ago, when Wayne and Ericka Ho-Sang were expecting their first child, their progeny’s athletic path seemed easy enough to predict. Wayne is a tennis pro. Ericka began taking tennis lessons during the pregnancy in anticipation of hitting balls with their first-born.
But when they presented their new toddler, Joshua, with a racquet, the lessons rarely went according to plan.
“He’d put the ball on the ground, take the racquet and stickhandle. . . . I guess hockey made more sense to him than tennis,” Wayne Ho-Sang says with a laugh. “When he got a little older, he said, ‘Dad, I like tennis, but I’m going to be a hockey player.’ I always said to him, ‘Don’t play sports for Dad. Choose your sport.’ I’m a big hockey fan, so it works. It’s working. It’s all good.”
All these years later, Joshua Ho-Sang, 15, is among the most talked-about teenaged players in hockey. A quick-skating, soft-handed centreman for the Toronto Marlies’ AAA minor midgets, he is expected to be among the top picks in next spring’s Ontario Hockey League draft.
Doug Gilmour, the Maple Leafs great who doubles as general manager of the OHL’s Kingston Frontenacs, calls Joshua “the elite of the elite” at his age level. Warren Rychel, GM of the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires, says it’s his opinion that Joshua should have been granted exceptional-player status and admitted into this year’s OHL draft a year early, when Rychel figures he would have been the first or second pick. Small wonder that even the occasional NHL scout has been seen at Joshua’s games.
“He gets you out of your seat,” Rychel says. “I think of all the guys I’ve seen since I’ve been here — (Steven) Stamkos, (Taylor) Hall, (John) Tavares — he’s the deadliest I’ve ever seen one-on-one with a goalie. He puts pucks away like nobody I’ve seen at that age.”
If he’s uniquely talented, he’s hardly an atypical GTA teen, locally born of global bloodlines. Both his parents immigrated here around age 10, Wayne from Kingston, Jamaica, Ericka from Santiago, Chile. Wayne grew up Christian, Ericka Jewish. (They met when Wayne, a graduate of Oakwood Collegiate, sang in the reggae band that played Ericka’s prom at Northern Secondary School).
Joshua is being raised Jewish, but he said his family — rounded out by his 10-year-old brother, Khole, who has eschewed both tennis and hockey for football — celebrates “everything,” including Christmas.
“I think I have a piece of me from everywhere in the world, and it makes me who I am today,” Joshua says. “I get an opportunity to experience so many different cultures. I mostly focus on the Jewish and the Spanish and the Jamaican. It’s always fun explaining it to people. They’re always very curious.”
A common question: From whom did he inherit his Chinese surname?
“My dad’s grandfather was from Hong Kong,” Joshua says. “I think that’s part of my culture that I’ve lost a little bit. But we go out for Chinese food.”
Joshua counts among his heroes Drake, the Forest Hill hip-hop star who’s the son of a Jewish mother and African-American father, because “he’s got a great work ethic, and he thinks different than everyone else.” He’s also an admirer of Chicago Blackhawks hall of famer Denis Savard, on whose YouTube legacy he partly patterns his game.
Says Steve Larmer, Savard’s longtime teammate, whose stepson Chad has played with Joshua: “(Savard and Ho-Sang) are similar skating-wise — their quickness and their ability to stop and turn on a dime. They’re very elusive, good in traffic. (Joshua) is a hard man to handle one-on-one.”
Ken Strong, Joshua’s coach with the Marlies, calls him “probably the most dynamic, skilled player in the province, if not the country.”
“He’s still learning how to play as a team player,” says Strong. “But he is really a good kid. Funny. Good in the dressing room. When he uses his linemates to his advantage, for him to get three or four points a game, it’ll be nothing, even against the best teams.”
It’s all heady praise, of course, but Joshua says he understands his ultimate goal, an NHL job, won’t be won with glowing words. Certainly his parents know the odds and the price of professional success. Wayne, who teaches at the Thornhill club where Canadian tennis sensation Milos Raonic began his rise to fame, has seen his share of fizzled phenoms.
“Josh was always good, and now they say he’s one of the top few players (in his age group). But I’m still not convinced,” Wayne said. “Until he’s there, it’s so far to go. . . . It’s continuous work.”
To that end, Joshua is on the ice about six to nine times a week, most weekdays at the PEAC School for Elite Athletes at Downsview Park, where he also attends classes, plus games and practices and tournaments with the Marlies. It doesn’t leave much time for, say, a weekend movie or a tennis game with mom or dad.
“Every year we ask Joshua if he wants to hang up his skates. ‘Are you sure this is what you want to do?’” Ericka Ho-Sang says. “It’s kind of a running joke in our house now. Because if you’re going to play, there are things you don’t get to do. In Grade 6, he had an opportunity to go on a graduation trip (to Niagara Falls) or play in a tournament. When we asked him what he was going to do, you’d think we had three heads. He was like, ‘Of course I’m going to play in the tournament.’ . . . We should all do things that make our heart sing, and he loves the game. Loves it.”
This past Tuesday night, in a North York arena packed with note-taking hockey men, you could see his smile beneath his cage as he zig-zagged through traffic with sharp-edged ease. He laid a board-rattling bodycheck, absorbed a couple of hits, took an ill-advised holding penalty and didn’t score in a 2–1 loss to a Mississauga Rebels team with a few OHL prospects of its own. He was back in skates the next day, and the next. En route to a distant destination, there’s joy in his journey.
“Sometimes I find myself wishing I was on the ice more,” Joshua says. “I’m never happier than when I’m on the ice.”
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