Niel Frear - Ice Dad

He may have arrived in the south having never seen ice but after 30 years here Niel Frear’s spent much of his time rink side at the helm while Queenstown’s produced some of New Zealand’s best Ice Blacks and the Southern Stampede’s soared to victory.

It’s usually the parents who encourage the kids into a sport, but in Niel’s case it was eldest of three sons, Cameron, then five, who got him hooked on the ice hockey stick.

Cameron is now the head coach of the very successful SkyCity Stampede side, has been for the past seven years, the team now through to the championship finals after a win at the weekend.

Sons Mitchell and Lachlan also play for the winning side, and all three sons have been Ice Blacks. Niel’s even managed a NZ Under 18 team for the NZ Ice Hockey Federation to an International Ice Hockey Federation tournament.

For decades he’s managed, also coached, ice hockey teams from the champion Wakatipu High School side and Southern Knights regional age group sides to managing the NZ Under 18 Ice Blacks, travelling to Romania with them.

While he plays down his coaching abilities, Niel led the local high school side to a historic victory at the South Island Secondary School Championships and managed the Southern Knights team to win the Under 19 national title in 2003 – their first big success.

On the NZ committee for the International Federation, Niel was selected to take two young national players to an international coaching camp in Finland and train himself. Despite coaching a number of teams, you won’t catch this Camp Dad boasting up his ability.

“I’d just coach if they needed someone, but we’d often have games down in Dunedin and when our local boys, including our sons, were down there studying I’d just call them in to help coach during our matches there,” he grins.

He’s “lived and breathed ice hockey for about 30 years”, all voluntary service, both as president and committee member of the Queenstown Ice Hockey Club, manager for The SkyCity Stampede travelling the country to every game for almost 10 years, also a Southern Ice Hockey League committee member. “Steve and Jane Rout and Robyn Lee taught me all I know and got me involved in this early on,” Niel says.

Ironically it was their plan to lure a rugby-mad Cameron away from travel all over Central Otago on frosty Saturday mornings that spurred Niel and wife of 38 years Luana into the ice hockey arena. “Lu has given so much time to the sport with me. We do everything as a team,” he says. “We bought a seven-seater and the spare seats were always full taking other kids to games.”

It all started when local ice hockey player Rob Lynes took that five-year-old Cameron, along with his son, to play ice hockey in Naseby.

“He was hooked and harped and harped to play ice hockey, so we took him to Jane’s Kiwi Hockey at the rink. He’d fallen in love with it,” Niel says.

Dad did too. “The kids taught me to skate, and I played social ice hockey in my 30s.”                                                           

Camp Dad for tournaments and games regionally, nationally and internationally, Niel says prior to the Graham family developing the fantastic indoor Queenstown Ice Arena, the club would hire scaffolding for seating at home Stampede games and erect and take it down for every season.

It’s all been as far as you can get from his rural Northland seaside upbringing on Whangaroa Harbour, south of Mangonui, where his mum and dad fished commercially, Niel and his four siblings growing up on their grandfather’s 60-acre (24.2ha) farmlet. His Māori mum knew her fish – the table always plentiful with scallops, crayfish, flounder and snapper she and Dad either hooked on a long line or netted at sea. They raised multiple animals and owned a fish processing factory too.

“My holiday job in primary school was sitting in the boat gutting flounder. We lived off the land and the sea.”

The transition from his tiny whanau primary school to Whangaroa High was a big one, Niel leaving early to go fishing before following his older brother south on a worker scheme to Ocean Beach Freezing Works at 18 where he met Luana. “I lasted a day at the freezing works.” He worked on farms then scored a linesman’s apprenticeship with Southland Electric Power Supply in the late 70s.

Niel later worked for other power companies, a planned OE canned after meeting Luana, instead marrying in 1988. Born and raised in Southland, her Northland dad had also come south on the freezing works scheme.

With a young family well underway they moved to Queenstown in 1996 where Niel joined Central Electric as a cable joiner, working his way up through what became Delta into more supervision and subdivision design. He’s now Aurora’s key account manager. “I went to night school and gained some qualifications in those early years, applying my practical skills which led into project management. My employers have all been great. I’ve had really good mentors.”

Queenstown development was booming and he learned fast.

“We’d fax our grocery order to Woolworths in Invercargill and collect it in banana boxes from the Northern Southland yard.”

Retiring as Stampede manager in 2023, Niel says he hasn’t. He just can’t keep away. “I still go to practice every Thursday and get a burger afterwards with the boys. We’re at most of the home SkyCity Stampede games,” he says. “I’m really grateful for this ice hockey community that’s helped us raise our boys and great employers who’ve given me the space to be part of it.”