Zaine McKenzie
Ice Hockey
“I’ve traveled the world with ice hockey, I’ve played in different countries, I’ve lived in different countries, I’ve played for my country.”
When Zaine McKenzie was growing up, he lived near Coventry and his Grandmother would take him ice skating on the weekends:
“You know when you absolutely love something and can’t stop? If someone asked me what I wanted to do, it was ice skate,” he said.
“A woman approached me – I think she was a head of the junior academy ice hockey – and she said ‘Do you want to start ice hockey?”
This led to McKenzie representing England under 15s in Slovakia, then moving to Canada for two years after his GSCEs to train at an ice hockey academy:
“It was the best two years of my life.”
“I played the highest level of under-18s in the province that I was in.”
McKenzie eventually came back to England because he was homesick, but moving here is a good starting point for his professional career – he currently plays in the second tier of the professional ice hockey league for MK Lighting.
However, McKenzie has dipped his toes in the first-tier league before:
“I’ve played one game in the top league for Coventry Blaze; that league is full of internationals, you only have roughly 4 – 5 English players on a team. The rest are Canadian, Swedish, and American.”
He is studying Accounting at the University of Northampton alongside being a professional player:
“Ice hockey is a professional sport, but it’s not football money.
“The players that I have played with that have been to university, their lives are a lot calmer because they’ve got something to fall back on.”
