As Ryan Croley laces up his skates, he knows he is doing more than getting in a workout. On this day, he is joined by a man who was shot six times in the pelvis and told he would never walk again.
“He’s on his fifth skating lesson with me and he will play hockey,” Croley, the founder and president of Warrior for Life Fund, told We Are The Mighty.
It’s not the first time Croley – a retired Navy captain with 26 years experience as a commanding officer of five Special Operations units – has seen the life-changing impact of being on the ice. In fact, he’s seen the therapeutic benefits in his own life. Croley began playing hockey while he was stationed at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, to alleviate loneliness and stress.
“I learned the game late, and I saw the benefits, not just the companionship and camaraderie, but also the benefits from the cognitive health standpoint,” he told NHL last year.
Originally founded as the Virginia Beach Hockey Club in 2012, Warrior for Life Fund (WFLF) has become a beacon in the community for active duty and veterans.
“We’re a hockey-based organization (and) we use hockey as one of our therapeutic tools,” Croley said of WFLF, the 501(c) 3 public charity he founded in 2012 in Virginia Beach. “Whether it’s working with adaptive players, veterans, veterans who have become adaptive players or just about (maintaining) community and camaraderie and keeping military guys and their families together as they transition through service into the real, scary world out there – we do that.”
The focus for WFLF, Croley said, is a three-pronged approach that includes: Flow, relationships and purpose.
Flow
“There are a ton of ways to get flow. For me, it’s hockey and I believe that guys that are retiring out of the military have got to figure out what gives them flow,” Croley said of the idea that someone’s flow is anything that makes them feel good through endorphins, which happens frequently in hockey.
What’s not “flow?” Turning to drugs and alcohol to numb.
“I feel like when I have veterans who lose their sense of flow, they’ve really lost another key piece – meaningful relationships,” Croley explained.
Relationships
Croley noted that veterans transitioning out of the military – or even some who have been reassigned – lose the relationships they’ve forged and sense of community.
“When they get out, they start to freak out,” Croley said, adding it’s why WFLF created the Human Performance Center, which offers a hub for cognitive skills training, speech-language pathology, mindfulness programs, veteran coffee socials and a sense of community for the Naval Special Warfare community.
Purpose
Coley told WATM that perhaps the biggest piece of WFLF is giving warfighters a sense of purpose again.
“When guys retire, a lot of times they had the most righteous sense of purpose ever – protecting, honoring, (and) serving the United States. So, they get out, and now they don’t really know what their purpose is, and what we try to do is give them a sense of purpose,” he explained.
Through these three pillars – coupled with programs the nonprofit runs – Croley said WFLF is able to provide crucial stability for veterans.
“We’re on the ice every day and we’re communicating to each other all the time,” he shared.
One of those programs? A partnership with the NHL that hosts annual memorial games in cities across the country that bring together NHL Alumni, as well as Naval Special Warfare personnel and their families.
It’s an incredible boost for a “small but agile nonprofit,” Coley said, underscoring the effectiveness of being able to move quickly when there are service members in need.
“We’re the only program that addresses cognitive health, mental health, physical fitness, outreach programs and alcoholism,” he explained of WFLF, which will celebrate its 13th birthday this year. “There are no wrong doors at our organization. We may not do it, but we’ve got a legitimate referral that we can direct you to.”
So what comes next after you have established an effective organization, changed countless lives and partnered with the premier professional ice hockey league in North America? “That’s an easy one,” Coley said. “We’re going to maintain our programs the way that we’re doing them now and at the level that we’re doing it now. We don’t have to be a high throughput organization. If you help save one person – what’s the value of that? It’s pretty significant, so I don’t want to change that.”