15-year-old Austinite one of nation’s top young hockey talents
AUSTIN, Texas - While Austin has had plenty of football stars come from here there hasn't been too many stars on the ice. Cameron McEwan could change all that.
Cameron is one of the nation's top hockey talents. He says that about halfway through this season he started getting calls from National Hockey League (NHL) scouts and, "I was like, holy crap, I have a shot at this."
That shot came through in March when Cameron was taken in the first round of the Western Hockey League's U.S. Prospects Draft.
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Grant McEwan, Cameron's dad, says, "I think it's pretty exciting. A player from a non-traditional hockey market has been picked in Major Juniors, it's never happened before. A great progression (from) when he first went on the ice at five years old."
Cameron says, "this is just one of the fruits of my labors. It's a long journey."
A journey that has taken Cameron away from home the past three years, at least during the school year, to play with the Dallas Stars Elite Hockey Club.
"Still being in that home environment with my friend and his mom, it's like having a second family. My mom will come up pretty much every weekend and my dad would alternate with my mom and my little sister would come up all the time. So, it felt like I was never really gone," Cameron says.
Due to the coronavirus COVID-19, Cameron and his Dallas Stars Elite Team didn't get to play in the U.S.A. Hockey Regionals because it was canceled and he was back home earlier than expected.
To stay on top of his game and do the workouts his coach gave him, Cameron has created a pretty cool setup in his backyard
"It was mostly just my parents just buying me all this nice equipment, so I could really keep training and maintaining my speed, agility, my shooting," Cameron says.
Grant jokes that it wasn't all about making sure Cameron kept up his skills.
"We didn't want him when he's shooting to destroy too much, so we made a little bit modification just to try and save, save the house a little bit," Grant says.
Even though this season was cut short, Cameron says he's excited about the future. "Just seeing where I've come from, seeing how much work I've put in, I mean, it's just a pretty special feeling."