Serving as billet parents has been a rewarding experience for Jon and Mandee Park.
The couple started housing Bruin players back in 2014, and have been enjoying it ever since. Not only have they become close to the players who have stayed at their home, they have developed tight bonds with those players’ families.
They also have a 10-year-old son, Keegan, and they find it’s really good for him to have those hockey-playing role models in the house.
Mandee learned a thing or two about being a good billet parent when she was growing up, as her parents, Victor and Holly Frank, were billets for many years.
“We’ve had hockey players in our house ever since we were growing up,” said Mandee.
It was partway through the 2013-14 season that Jon and Mandee were approached about housing a Bruin, as a player wasn’t working out with his billet family at that time.
“We got contacted to see if we would be interested in taking him, and so we took him halfway through the year, and we’ve stuck with it ever since,” Mandee said.
Serving as a billet parent is a lot of work, but they believe it’s worth it, she said. They get to watch the players make progress, and to be around them while they do what they love to do.
“Every summer, we go and visit our billets, and we usually spend our summers in Minnesota, which is (home to) one of our billets, and Keegan actually goes to hockey camp every summer with another one of our billets in Dickenson,” said Mandee.
Jon noted they recently spent time in Duluth, Minn., watching two of their former billets play college hockey.
Devan Harrison is in his second year at the Park home. Their other billet, Tylor Ludwar is new to their home. The two played together with the Kamloops Blazers in the Western Hockey League, and Jon believes it was an easy decision for them to live together in Estevan.
It’s an experience they would recommend to other people, and the players are great role models for youngsters.
And they look to treat their billets the same way they’d want someone to treat their son if he plays outside of Estevan
“Keegan plays hockey, and we never know, if we might need someone to billet him perhaps one day,” said Mandee.
