BOSTON — The man sat hunched over the books, flipping through page after page.
He unearthed texts on the shelves of medical and educational facilities at the University of Brno in the Czech Republic, as well as books about tennis stars Ivan Lendl and Martina Navratilova. Pavel Zacha was 38 years old, he was not yet the father of the future NHL player who bears his name, but his mind was already spinning when he read Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book “Arnold’s Fitness for Kids, Ages Birth to Five.”
He thought about what the world would look like in 30 years, how to combine health, happiness and success, knowing that he himself had always been happiest playing sports. He thought about his other children, two daughters, both athletic, and how he would raise this one differently, with a purpose.
He studied the resumes of sports stars, artists and musicians, trying to look for commonalities from their childhoods, to piece together the ideal program, to identify tips, tricks and methods, to build a future which would begin at birth – or, really, before.
His son also played sports. He would make sure of it.
“I was able to convince my wife of this non-traditional intention, which was absolutely crucial,” the father wrote to NHL.com last spring. “Before Pavel was born, I had already prepared all the conditions.”
The son, whose fate was decided, was born on April 6, 1997.
They would call him Pavel.
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Young Zacha grew up without knowing any other life.
“He told me from a young age that I should be a professional in certain sports,” the Boston Bruins center said of his father. “It was kind of like, ‘OK, you can choose whichever one you want to do, but you have to be the best at it.'”
Zacha now has the opportunity to prove it, to climb the ladder, to make his father’s dreams come true, because he has the best opportunity of his professional career in front of him. With the Bruins’ top two centers, Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci, retiring during the offseason, a top-six position is there for him.
Zacha will have every chance to prove he belongs starting for the Bruins this season. He had three shots on goal in 16:42 of playing time in a 3-1 win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Wednesday. The Bruins next play Saturday at home against the Nashville Predators (7 p.m. ET; BSSO, NESN).
“The opportunity is huge here,” Zacha said. “I think that’s one of the reasons I got traded here, it was like I was learning as much as I could from the two best two-way centers in the league. I had the chance to play with them and then (this) opportunity presented itself. I think it’s something that creates a little more pressure, but it’s what every player wants to do.
“I think I had a great opportunity last year, but this year, taking the next step is huge.”
However, getting here began from the first moment young Pavel opened his eyes.
“I even thought that it was possible to accustom children to movement and playing sports even earlier, almost from birth,” writes the father, emphasizing that his daughters started the program at 8 and 10 years old, which which he then judged to be far too late. “And I discovered that there were no boundaries. I created my own education structure where sports would merge with music, languages, being outdoors, painting or building blocks from toy kits all the time so that it is varied and interesting for the child and that the child can develop and improve. the weather.”
Later he would call it Kameveda.
Pavel and his wife Ilona devoted themselves to their son, who was a happy baby. The father built him a small gym when he was 5 months old and was delighted when he started walking at 9 months old. Before his third birthday, he needed a second bike because he had already destroyed the first one.
On a typical day, father and son would finish breakfast and head to the playground to ride scooters and rollerblades, play tennis and ball games, run and jump. There was football, 1 on 1s, where the father acted as goalie during hockey matches.
They usually finished with archery before returning indoors to paint and sing imaginatively, accompanied by a guitar.
The rink was next, for skating or skills.
After lunch the next stop was a nature reserve, cycling and wading in the river, climbing trees and rocks, cooking over a campfire.
There were Legos and English training.
There was work at a hockey or tennis club, rest, time with his grandfather. In winter, he ended the day with 70 minutes of skiing or snowboarding in the evening.
He was 3 years old.
“Obviously, at first I had no idea how far he would go in the sport, but I very quickly stopped worrying about his performance,” the father wrote, noting that his son regularly competed against older children – and surpassed them.
When he was 4, the family added basketball and soccer to the tennis and hockey clubs he was a part of, as well as track and field and karate. By the time he was 12, they were narrowing sports down to his two best sports, his two favorites, tennis and hockey.
“I looked at which sport he loved the most and each one also gave him something to his total athletic potential,” the father wrote. “It was hard but it is the healthiest approach for the child because he is not unilaterally overloaded but his development is compact, balanced and complex.”
“From (when he was 8) we started traveling abroad and everything started getting even more adventurous. People told me he would get tired of the sport but the truth was quite the opposite.
“In all these years, he never said he didn’t want to go to training or a match. And even today, he never misses an optional NHL practice. »
The family had moved shortly after Zacha’s birth from Brno to Velke Mezirici, where his father was from, to enjoy fresh air and healthy living. Then, at age 12, Zacha and his father moved to Liberec, for Zacha to join the Bili Tygri hockey club, while Ilona stayed at home to earn money for the family with her sisters.
His father was the only one who watched every practice, the only one who gave his child a protein shake after it was over, the only one who prepared meals so healthy that they sometimes bordered on inedible. (“We fought a few times because I couldn’t eat it,” young Zacha said. “He got angry, so he tried it and he just threw it away because we couldn’t eat it.” “I don’t even put it in his mouth. He’s gotten better.”
“When I planned all of this, I considered it the greatest sacrifice a father could make for his child,” the father wrote. “One must completely ignore one’s own ego and place one’s child at the absolute pinnacle of all family actions and values.
“And when our son went to the (Canadian Hockey League) one day, the next day it all suddenly ended and I realized I had just had the most interesting part of my life.”
