With tear-filled eyes and heavy hearts, the Hershey Ice Hockey team mourned the loss of one very important member of their team: beloved coach and friend, Justin Yingling.

HHS Ice Hockey assistant coach Justin Yingling was emitted to Glendale Adventist Hospital on January 1, 2017 while visiting his family in Los Angeles, California. Yingling passed away suddenly from a heart attack, due to a congenital heart defect, leaving his family, friends, and players devastated.

Yingling, a 1998 Hershey High School graduate, passed away at the age of 36. He left behind his wife, Elizabeth Thomas Yingling, his parents, Jack and Jane Yingling, brother, Jordan Yingling and loving dog, Kaana, along with many other family members and friends.

Yingling graduated from Lebanon Valley College with a business degree. He worked for Cleveland Brothers as a manager of Marketing Intelligence programs for the last ten years.  Yingling returned to Hershey as a coach last year after many successful years coaching with Mechanicsburg.

Yingling’s first year at Hershey was during the 2015-16 season, and the coach was instantly popular amongst the team.

“He came out and started cracking jokes and I was like ‘yeah this guy’s cool’,” said HHS senior and team captain Aaron Dobrolsky.

“He was kind of a mellow guy,” said Dobrolsky. “He didn’t say much but when he did, it was kind of important, so you really wanted to listen to what he had to say.”

Dobrolsky described how he, along with the rest of the team, loved to be around him.

HHS junior Patrick Larkin agreed saying, “he was always there to lighten the mood whenever we were down.”

Larkin described his favorite memory with Yingling as the time he scored two goals and had two assists during the first game of his sophomore year. Earlier that season during minicamp, Larkin said Yingling made the comment of how he didn’t really notice Larkin at first, and he should “try to be productive this year”. But after his first game, Yingling joked saying ‘oh yeah now I see you now”.

But the times that the team didn’t perform well, Larkin said he was always there to encourage and motivate. “I just came back from injury in late December…and I was really frustrated. I broke a stick over the boards, because I was just furious that I couldn’t do it right…and he just took me off to the side and…just told me to calm down, ‘it’s gonna be ok’,” said Larkin. “[He] brought a calming presence”.

His presence will definitely be missed both on and off the ice.

“It’s already started to affect us defensively,” said HHS sophomore Caden Freer. The team has already received two ‘too many men’ calls due to the lack of organization on the defensive line. But perhaps the biggest void in the team is the absence of enthusiasm and encouragement coming from Yingling.

His positive nature touched more lives than just those on the ice.

“It was packed, probably like 500 people were there,” said Larkin when describing the funeral. Yingling’s funeral was held at Lebanon Valley College on Sunday, January 15, at 1:00pm in Miller Chapel. Most of the team and staff attended the ceremony. “You could really tell that he really left an impact on a lot of people.”

Three days later was the team’s first home game since Yingling’s passing.

Before the team took the ice to play Cedar Crest that night, a ceremony was held to honor him. Each player, starting with Dobrosky, skated to center ice and placed a rose in a vase alongside his high school jersey.

“Just knowing it was goodbye, and I’m never gonna see him again, it was just kinda hard,” said Dobrolsky when describing how he felt during the ceremony. “A lot of us channeled that emotion into our game…it helped us get fired up.”

And that emotion has carried the team throughout the remainder of the season.

“There’s no lack of motivation this year so far,” said Larkin. “It shows that we’re a family, not just a team.”

It was always Yingling’s dream for his players to win the championship Bears cup, so that’s just what the team intends to do.

“We’re doing it for him now,” said Freer.