Featured Player: Alex Grose
Alex Grose was born to skate. His father, a Canadian, taught him how to skate when he was 18 months old. By the time he was three, he was skating with a hockey stick in hand. To help him and his younger brother practice, his dad built a backyard rink behind their house in Fairfax, VA.
Flash forward 24 years and numerous hockey teams later, Grose is left wing on Mason’s starting line – a fitting place, considering his father played on Mason’s inaugural team when it was founded in 1988. He has recorded 19-18—37 in 17 games in the first half of the season, including four power play goals, eight power play assists and one short-handed goal. He is second on the team in points, third in goals scored and tied for third in assists.
With 70 penalty minutes, he has already set a new Mason record for PIM in a single season. He is on track to reach, or even surpass, his previous season high total from 2013-14, when he had 105 PIM in 22 games with the Potomac Patriots in the United States Premier Hockey League Elite Division (USPHL Elite). Although he got in drop-the-gloves-and-duke-it-out-type of fights in juniors, he now tries to play smarter and focus on making good plays and helping his teammates. He has changed from being more of a grinder to being a classic power forward.
His long hockey journey has taken him many places. Grose played for Clyde’s Clippers in elementary school, participating in the first “Mites on Ice” at a Washington Capitals game when he was six, and the Virginia Statesmen-AAA in middle school. During his first three years at Fairfax High School, he split his time between the Ashburn Xtreme-AA, the Reston Raiders-AA, and his school’s hockey team. He also played lacrosse. For his senior year, he played junior hockey with the Potomac Patriots Junior B team in the Continental Hockey Association Tier III. He also received an All-Met Honorable Mention senior year for being one of the top scorers in his high school’s league.
After he graduated from high school in 2011, he played half of the 2011-12 season for the Sturgeon Falls Lumberjacks in the Greater Metro Junior A Hockey League, and then the Potomac Patriots in the Empire Junior Hockey League (EmJHL). When the Patriots moved to the Eastern Junior Hockey League (EJHL) Tier III Junior A for the 2012-13 season, Grose played with current Mason teammate Cameron Smith for the first time.
He later played with the Potomac Patriots in the USPHL Elite and the North Bay Trappers (a Canadian junior hockey team in the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League) then was traded to the Toronto Lakeshore Patriots, a Junior A team in the Ontario Junior Hockey League. During the 2013-14 season, Grose and the Patriots won the OJHL Buckland Cup Championship as well as the Dudley Hewitt Cup Central Canadian Championship, and were finalists at the Canadian Junior A National Championship, the Royal Bank Cup.
Grose received offers to play NCAA Division III hockey, but chose to attend Iowa State, which recruited him to play ACHA Division I club hockey. He played on the Division I team his first season, then spent the following two seasons with the Division III team. He graduated last summer after only three years, earning a degree in finance.
He now attends graduate school at Mason, where he is in a Master’s program in Economics. When he’s not at the ice rink or in class, he works full-time as a mortgage banker for Cityworth Mortgage. He hopes to eventually become a financial advisor.
Grose also spends time playing on another hockey team – a competitive roller hockey team in Leesburg – with Mason linemate Trevor Mack. He says he and Mack are the two worst players on their team.
