Growing up in Champaign most kids run around baseball fields with dreams of hitting a home run in the 9th inning of the World Series, or shoot hoops on the local playgrounds thinking of hitting the game-winning shot in the Final Four, but very seldom do you find a kid in the driveway with a hockey stick aspiring to be the next Wayne Gretzky.

But for Champaign native and Illinois men’s hockey assistant coach Darin Trulock, hockey became his first love at a young age and has been a major part of his life since.

“My dad took me to the ice rink when I was four or five years old and started me skating, and I just fell in love with it,” Trulock said.

However, since hockey was not a popular sport – taking a backseat to basketball, baseball and football – finding others who showed the passion for the game was not an easy task.

“We were struggling for players and stuff,” he said. “But we made it work. We had to travel a lot. My parents did a great job of getting me to wherever we needed to be, whether it was Chicago, Indianapolis or St. Louis, and that was a big help for me growing up.”

In high school Trulock experimented with playing baseball for awhile, but when it came time to make a decision between the two sports, the choice was easy.

“The choice between hockey and baseball really made itself,” he said. “I really wasn’t that good of a baseball player, and hockey was the only sport I really loved doing.”

After making the decision to attend Illinois after high school, Trulock knew that trying to play hockey for the team he watched growing up would be on his list of things to do.

“From as little as seven or eight years old I can remember coming to watch Illini hockey games,” he said. “When I got out of high school and decided to come to Illinois, I thought I had a chance out to play. I was kind of on the bubble of making the team.”

As a freshman in 1999, Trulock made the Division-I team but only got the chance to play in two games. After two seasons playing with Illinois’ Division-II team his sophomore and junior years, Trulock returned to the ice for the Illini as a part of the Division-I team on Jan. 11, 2003 against Kent State and tallied the first point of his career with an assist.

Trulock would finish his senior season playing in a total of four games and getting two assists for an Illini team that would finish the season 37-2 en route to a Central States Collegiate Hockey League championship.

“I was right there on the bubble every year,” he said. “I spent most of my time playing on the junior varsity team. But it was a wonderful experience to be able to come here and play in front of the hometown crowd. I made a lot of friends and a lot of great people that I still talk to and hang out with today from being at Illinois.”

Despite only playing in six games for Illinois’ Division-I team, Trulock’s biggest contribution to the program has come after his playing days.

After graduating from Illinois with a degree in Computer Engineering in 2003, Trulock started working at the rink as a hockey instructor and coaching the Division-II Illini team. A year later head coach Chad Cassel asked Trulock to join his staff as an assistant for the Division-I team.

“Having Darin on the bench works out well,” Cassel said. “He is familiar with the systems and everything else we are trying to do here. He’s laid back and has a very good understanding of the game. We’re a good match for each other because he can be the good cop and I can be the bad cop.”

Since Trulock is young and laid back he provides Cassel with the ability to relate to players, something that Cassel is grateful for.

“He is a nice liason between the players and myself,” Cassel said. “The players feel a little more comfortable complaining to Darin as opposed to coming to me and complaining, and then Darin is able to relay the complaints or things to me. So it works out well.”

Even the Illini players agree that Trulock is the go-to guy if they have a problem.

“Having Darin behind the bench is a great thing,” team captain Steve Krates said. “We all know him pretty well and he’s a lot easier to talk to if we’re in difficult situations. He understands some of the players more than Chad does because he’s hung out with them more.”

While Cassel benefits from Trulock’s experience and ability to relate to the players on the team, Trulock credits Cassel for most of his knowledge of the game.

“I definitely have learned almost everything I know about hockey from Chad,” Trulock said. “Especially now coaching under him, but I learned a lot as a player from him too. He knows what he is doing. He has been around a long time and has a lot of experience.”

With a great understanding of the game, Trulock has been able to bring a winning attitude to the program that has rubbed off on some of the players.

“He’s always positive,” Krates said. “He always looks to win and has the winning attitude. He is always looking to get the best out of the players, and with his attitude he is able to get the best out of the players every night.”

Even with the experience and knowledge from his playing days, Trulock knows that ever since becoming an assistant coach last season his understanding of the game has grown greatly.

“I’ve learned a lot more about the game from coaching,” he said. “I think I would be a much better player now just because I understand a lot about what is going out there. I can see everything happening out there much better when I watch the game now than when I was playing.”

Trulock’s knowledge of the game isn’t only being passed on to his former teammates, but also to the youth hockey players around the area.

After Cassel stepped down as the director of coaching for the Champaign-Urbana Youth Hockey Association to dedicate time to his family, he asked Trulock to take over for him.

“I enjoy working with the kids,” he said. “They’re young and fun. It took some patience at times. But it’s great being out there with them, and being able to see them develop from year to year.”

But for Trulock the most rewarding factor of being an instructor for the youth program has been being able to give back to the program he was a part of as a kid.

“I wanted to be able to give back to the youth hockey organization that was great to me as a kid and dedicate some of my time to improving the youth club here,” he said.

Whether it’s helping out his former teammates or his former youth program, Trulock is enjoying what he’s doing. As for that computer engineering degree, maybe it will come in handy in the future, maybe not.

“I don’t see myself going into an engineering field anytime soon,” he said. “I’m enjoying the coaching thing, and as I keep getting deeper into it I’m being able to pick up more things and play a bigger role with the Illini hockey team. So I’m going to try and stick with coaching as long as I can, but we’ll see.”