Richie Crowley, Hockey

Richie Crowley believes he is right where he is meant to be as a creative, tea-drinking poet who left the traditional workforce to become an independent contractor who helps businesses best market themselves through their content and other media — and his career as a ice hockey player had an integral part in that journey. His success as an athlete led to a scholarship to Brown University, where he gained a whole new perspective as he met people from all over the world. They in turn encouraged him to eventually play professionally in Europe and take time to explore other cultures. It was from these experiences that helped shape who he is today —which sometimes surprises those who once knew him as the buff, aggressive athlete he once was.

Name: Richie Crowley
Hometown: Canton, MA
Sport: Ice Hockey
Career Duration: 22 years
Level: Professional
Retirement: 2016
Current Occupation: Creative Projects Manager for RICKiRICKi
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Interests: Writing, reading, adventure, exploration, travel, cooking dinner

Where are you from and how were you introduced to ice hockey?
I’m from Canton, MA, which is a suburb south of downtown Boston. Hockey around this area isn’t really a choice: it’s a default. My father played hockey growing up and in high school, and influenced me early on. I also wanted to be like my friends – despite them making me play goalie. I’ve been skating since I was about 2.5 to three years old. As I grew up and hit 10 years old, I found success — which makes you like something even more when you’re good at it.
 
Do they have hockey teams in high schools on the East Coast?
Public schools have hockey. Parochial schools used to have the best hockey players in the state, but now the New England Prep (an independent school league) have the best. We have like six NCAA Division I hockey programs out of 65 in the country just here in Boston. There is a massive tournament called The Beanpot every year, which is second to the Stanley Cup. Boston obviously is a sports town, and there are so many professional hockey players from Boston.
 
Did you play on teams outside of high school as well?
I played on travel teams or select teams. When I was 14 years old I made our high school varsity team. I might have been the youngest in the league, and definitely was the youngest on my team that year and the next year. After my sophomore year I was invited to play for the under 18 US National Team. I moved to Michigan by myself to play for them for two years until college. That accelerated my playing career. I went from a great player in my age group and in my area, to putting on the USA jersey and playing against teams from Canada, Russia, Sweden and Finland. That was a major step forward. At 16 years old, I was also made captain. I didn’t even have my driver’s license yet. Looking back, I wish I had better mentors who would encourage me to focus on other things as well. If I could talk to a 16-year-old going into that situation today, I would have them call me every day because there is so much to learn.

How did you decide to go to Brown?
For me it was between going to Harvard or Brown, but one of my teammates chose Brown, so that was it. I didn’t even really know about the academic opportunity Brown provided when I chose it. To me, it was a Division I school who wanted to offer me a scholarship to play there.  
 
How was your college experience?
It was amazing. When I started, I began maturing and layering who I am as a person. The 18 years prior was all about ice hockey. I encountered brilliant students doing so much good in the world. They were diverse ethnically, culturally, and so progressive in their attitudes toward each other. It wasn’t like going to Michigan or Ohio State where you are celebrated as an athlete. At Brown, they look at you like you got in because you are an athlete, not because of a perfect ACT score. It was so impressive how intellectually and academically bright everyone was. I started to diversify my friend group, which has carried forward to today with whom I choose to surround myself with. It’s such a melting pot, and it opened up my eyes that hockey isn’t the only thing in this world. I can’t say enough great things about Brown — it’s a really special place.
 
What did you study there?
I got my Bachelor of Arts in economics and also political science. I was told when I got in that athletes study economics because it’s easy to end up on Wall Street after graduation. Sophomore year I didn’t really care about economics, but figured I should keep the degree since I already completed so many classes. I started to take a lot more political science classes, focusing on civil war in foreign countries and ideologies of countries outside the US. I was in an infancy of discovering how diverse our world is. Growing up in Boston, I hadn’t met many people who might be Muslim or people of different cultures, or people from the LGBTQ community for example. At Brown not only did I have my teammates, but people from all over the world and income levels, sexualities, and cultures — every day I was meeting someone new. Political science helped me understand others more, as well as the conflict that is dividing us. I was the only hockey player going that route. I felt bold for branching out.
 
What did you do after college?
Within three days of getting eliminated from the conference tournament my senior year, I signed with the Wheeling Nailers, the ECHL affiliate of the Pittsburg Penguins. Then I came back to Brown in April of that year. I was only with them for a couple weeks, but it officially made me a professional. At the time, I was asking myself if I was good enough for the NHL, and I didn’t think I was. I had to decide whether I was willing to drudge through the lower levels of North American Ice Hockey or pursue opportunities in Europe. I hold an EU passport since I have dual citizenship with Italy, so that made me an easier recruit for European teams. A week after graduating I signed with France. We won our league and the French National Championship. The next year I went to the Austrian league, then the Italian league where I was invited to play for the Italian National Team.
 
Was the language barrier difficult?
There was definitely a language barrier. I wish I had applied myself more to learn. It was hard maybe the first two weeks, but I lived with someone from Sweden and an American who played at Yale, so I had an English-speaking apartment.
 
What was it like playing in Europe? 
It was a great experience. All teams observe international breaks three times per year where coaches give you three to four days without practice, and so you get to travel. I got to visit Cinque Terre, Lyon, Paris, Budapest, Florence, Rome, Berlin, and more for weekend trips. After the seasons ended, the organization pays to fly you home. If we were eliminated in March, I would tell them to book me a flight home in April. They saved money that way, plus I got to spend more time in Europe. I was able to go to Thailand, spend a month in India, and more. I would have never have traveled like that if I hadn’t played in Europe. I probably wouldn’t have even been curious to go if I hadn’t gone to Brown with my classmates. A typical Bostonian plays in North America, then gets a job at a financial
firm, plays in a men’s league, gets married and has kids, who then play hockey and start the cycle over again. Brown brought me out of that cycle to show me there is so much more to life – so many types of people to meet and experiences to have.
 
What are some highlights from your professional hockey career?
Winning the French league was really cool because we were on TV every night. Our team had the smallest budget in the league and so we were never supposed to win. People were crying, it meant so much to them — we were like kings. Our faces were up on banners even into the next year. Then the following year in Austria, it was the best hockey I ever played. The fans were wild like European soccer fans. It was incredible. I was sure glad they were cheering for us and not against us. In Cortina, Italy, we played at the beautiful ski resort that held the 1956 Olympics (they also just got the bid for the 2026 Olympic games), which was a special place to be living.
 
What made you decide to retire?
A mix of three things: my injury, I didn’t have great offers to continue, and I felt I needed to start my next career. I had continued to struggle with herniated discs, which flared up every once in awhile. Just getting ready for practice took 30 minutes of bodywork. At the same time I wasn’t receiving contract offers that were a step up from where I was, which I felt I needed in order to make it worth living away from my family, training year around, and pushing my body. Panic also set in because I was 25 years old and all my college friends had six figure salaries. Some were even starting companies and having success three years into their careers. I didn’t even remember how to use Excel or PowerPoint, so I thought I didn’t have applicable business skills. As quickly as I could, I got a job when I got back to Boston. I felt like if I didn’t get a job right away I was going to be a bum that played sports and would never do anything else.
 
How did you find work so fast when you returned to Boston?
I went on Angel List or LinkedIn boards and basically typed in key words “Boston, Start Up, and Tech.” I moved back in with my parents on May 1st, and on May 9th I interviewed at Happie. During the interview I met with three people. The Sales Director was a buddy of one of my college teammates, and one of the co-founders had studied abroad in Cortina where I played. The next day I got the offer to join the sales team and took it, but two weeks in I was asked to leave because I wasn’t producing. I didn’t want to leave, so I asked them to make me an intern or put me somewhere else. I ended up staying there for about two years, finishing as a manager with the largest team in the company and the number three employee. None of the stuff we sold or did was what I trained for in college. It really just came down to hard work, logic, a willingness to learn, discipline, and knowing how to show up every day — which are things athletes know how to do. Within two years of retiring from hockey, I had climbed to the top of the company and felt like it was easy. Now I know that if I had stopped playing hockey at 30 or 35 years old, I could have started at the bottom of a company and worked my way up – regardless of the skills I thought I needed. I learned that if you don’t know how to do something, you could take a class or ask others for help. There are ways to catch up and get ahead.
 
I think a lot of athletes feel unqualified for jobs after sports, since they feel like they don’t have any official work experience. What advice do you have for them?
A friend of mine just stopped playing in the NHL last year after the Stanley Cup Finals. He was going into an interview in Toronto, scared that he was under qualified. He felt like he didn’t have the skills they wanted. I told him to look at what he did have: he had gone from the third league in America and worked his way up to the highest league we have, and helped his team make it to the championship. He knows how to grow, learn and adapt. He wouldn’t be intimidated by contracts with large figures because he can speak the language of money — he’s seen it. Think about how as an athlete, he has overcome injuries, dealt with travel, worked with different teams, spoken on TV and has done interviews. Perhaps he didn’t already know how to work programs like Excel or PowerPoint, but he could learn all those. The skills he has like desire and commitment you can never teach. I can’t teach someone to work harder than anyone else in a company. It’s engrained in you. Someone else may be better at putting together presentations right now, but that’s something that can be learned.
 
For athletes to know these things, it can help with their confidence going into an interview. You can walk in and say, “You’re right, I don’t have a lot of these skills you listed, but I can learn them. I have skills you haven’t listed, like knowing how to show up with my body and mind every day, knowing how to be a leader and how to work harder than anyone else, and you can’t teach that. I can learn anything this role needs, but you can’t teach anyone else what I have.” I want athletes to know how to position themselves with this confidence. Yes you are going through a complete shift of identity, so of course you aren’t going to be the most confident in a new role. I know how it feels — hockey is all I was for 20 years. But if an athlete can put forward the parts of themselves they are confident in from what they’ve gained through their athletic career, they would be OK.
 
What made you leave Happie Tech last year?
The CEO is an entrepreneur, and she had the idea to help individuals in recovery for opiate use disorder with ride sharing, telemedicine, and opening a space for introducing tech solutions. It seemed like a challenge. I did it for a year, but we ran into a lot of red tape and found how difficult it is to work with health care, and so I lost some passion for it. I felt like we failed, but I learned so much. When I was working on that project, I started talking to Angel Investors, CEOs and venture capitalists. That’s when I decided I deserve to talk to the leaders in my next pursuit. I started working on various creative projects and decided to open my own creative house called RickiRicki. I started writing boring copy to my own stories, starting newsletters, and consulting with creative artists like musicians, neuro-educators, tattoo artists, and others. I think of ideas or companies I want to work with and pitch to them. I became really interested in wellness, meditation, and eating more plants after my experience working in health care. I was inspired to do a solo self-supported bike ride from Boston to Santa Monica, CA, riding nearly 4,000 miles in 65 days. We raised 2,500 vegan meals for people less fortunate through the company.
 
It’s fun to work with so many different companies and projects. I would get too bored with months of doing the same thing. Plus, it’s cheaper for companies since I can do contract work and they don’t have to hire me as an employee. I like to go above and beyond what my contracts outline. I believe in my ideas, and not only my ability to generate them, but execute them as well.

How did you get into the storytelling, creative side of work after studying economics and political science, then working for a tech company?
I always had it in mind. The woman I’m with has given me so much confidence. She is the first person in my life who saw me as an artist rather than an athlete. She reminded me that just because I was an athlete didn’t mean I had to be in sales or become a relationship manager. She encouraged me, saying that if I wanted to go write screenplays or stories and be creative, to just do it and show it to the world. All my athlete friends were told they needed to work in tech sales. Maybe I would be good at it, but I want to be creative. I want to be in conversations with agents and production houses on how to make documentaries. I can still sell them the idea, but I want to be involved in pre-production, editing, post-production, and writing. I want them to read my words rather than just buy my software.
 
Do you stay in contact with your old teammates?
I have relationships with the guys I played with seven or eight years ago, but I’m not the same person. I don’t follow hockey or party like I used to. I prefer to meditate, eat plants, and write quietly. Some of them are in a “bro macho” type field that is similar to the hockey locker room. Sometimes it’s hard because they want to go to a bar and watch a sport game while I want to drink tea and go for a hike. I find myself hanging out with them less and less, not because I don’t love them anymore, but because we just don’t have as many shared interests. I’m evolving. The people I now meet see me as a self-identifying creative, sober male. No one now knows me as an athlete. They are surprised if they see photos of me at 21, big and buff with two beers being poured over my head after a hockey game. What a different life. It was a 25-year window of my story. It’s there, but I don’t revisit it too often. Maybe I’ll go skate with some guys while I’m home for Christmas, but I just don’t have the same affinity for it like when I was a young, hormonal, and all I wanted to do was play sports. I feel like I juiced the entire lemon of being a hockey player, and took advantage of those opportunities. I feel like I was supposed to play hockey to get to Brown, so I could meet people who would encourage me to go to Europe, which would then lead me to other experiences and opportunities. I have no bad feelings or regret. I celebrate that time and look back fondly. When I was riding my bike across the country for 65 days, I returned to an athlete mindset. But I was also documenting and creating stories while I rode because I  also embraced the artist in me.
 
Did you have any other difficulties transitioning out of hockey?
In a way, people just didn’t care about me anymore. I thought I had a lot of friends because I am Richie — but it was because I was a professional athlete. The moment I stopped playing hockey, I was just an entry-level employee at a Boston tech company like everyone else. I was so much less interesting to family, friends, and people I would meet. It was easy to impress a girl when I could say I was a professional athlete in Europe; but when I was an intern living with my parents — not so much. How I started seeing myself through the eyes of others was really impacted. I had to eventually stop caring and be able to see myself for who I am. That took a couple years of feeling forgotten and unimportant, and like I was nothing. I had gotten used to the little bit of fame that comes with being a professional athlete, and how easy it was to get people to like you. I could be a jerk, but I was still a professional athlete, and people wanted to be around that. People had never wanted to talk to me about anything else besides hockey. They weren’t interested in the rest of me. It can take time for others to start seeing you as the real you, and it can take time.
 
Are you still dealing with any injuries now?
I still have herniated L4 and L5 discs in my spine, which sometimes flare up when I run or do yoga. It’s been with me for 10 years, but I try to take care of it as much as I can. I injured them during a hit in a game, and continued to aggravate it with improper lifting form. I don’t lift anymore, and instead just do body weight exercises. I’ve also had concussions, but those haven’t flared up. I crashed my bike about a month ago and had to go to the hospital for that.
 
What type of bodyweight exercises do you do?
Any natural movement. I discovered Dan Buettners research on the “Blue Zones” – or the five places in the world where people live the longest. No one sets aside time for exercise there. They just have natural movement in their day-to-day life. Perhaps they live in the hills of Costa Rica and walk in and out of town every day. In none of these places do they have the conveniences of first world countries. They swim, walk, and hang out with friends. I try to do as much natural movement as I can. In LA there are pull up bars, stairs and tracks everywhere. I run, do yoga, bike, and even do burpees and pull-ups where I can. If someone says let’s go for a swim or bike ride or run, I want to be able to just go. I have probably taken it up a notch, where if someone asked me to run a marathon or bike 130 miles to San Francisco tomorrow, I could do it. I never work out to the point of exhaustion; it’s whatever feels good because I don’t have a contract or coach telling me what to do, which is nice.
 
Do you miss hockey? 
The thing I miss the most is the practice after a really big win, because usually it’s not hard and it’s just fun. You’re just playing like a kid again. Everyone is happy, so you just go out there and skate. Playing a sport without pressure is so fun.
 
What advice would you give to a younger athlete going through the same journey you had?
The first bit of advice is regarding how they train and treat their body. In the athlete culture there are sexy parts to being an athlete, like the partying, and even drugs, sex and money. My advice is to not let that interfere. You have one opportunity to get as far in your sport as possible. Treat your body well. Invest more in your overall wellness, and take care of your mind in your training. There are a lot of studies coming out about the affects of alcohol and poor sleep. But in college, it’s glorified to stay out until 3 a.m. and then go to your 8 a.m. practice.
 
My other advice is to take more personal responsibility. When you’re an athlete, your playing time is not always the coach’s responsibility. They need to win games as well as develop you. If they aren’t playing you as much, don’t wait for them to come develop you. Take that personal responsibility to go up to coach and ask why. Ask them to help you. It helps in transition too, to have that same level of confidence and demand greatness from yourself. Tell employers who you are and what you can become. For example, right now I’m trying to pitch to different companies. I’m not just going to submit a letter. I’m going to find all the emails and connections on LinkedIn and message them until I get an email conversation with their senior editor, and then pitch it. Go far to make your dreams happen, whether in sport or in life after.
 
Do you feel like you didn’t take personal responsibility when you were a player?
I know what I could have been. When I was 16 years old I was the captain of the national team. Why didn’t I play in the last winter Olympics? I know where I went wrong. I didn’t take personal responsibility over certain things. I let it affect my confidence, and partied a lot. It was small things like that. I now feel like I have an opportunity to go far in the creative world, with my connections in media and the arts, so I’m going to go for it now. I’m going to have the most relentless follow up and work ethic. I could have been more as a hockey player. Now I want to be the greatest creative mind, and I want everyone in the arts world to point to me for projects. Don’t wait for anyone to make you great — make yourself great and show them how great you can be. ​