Benjamin Abenduct – The Pulled Porkinator

[Schnee 96]

Benjamin Abenduct was born February 6^th 2008 to parents Robert and Hannah in the little town of Oshgosh in a small area of southern Ontario. He was at his hockey game less than a month after birth. Both his parents loved the game and wanted to share their love with their son. His mother gave him a blankie at a young age that he brought to every game they went to see. When Benjamin started to play it came with him to every game as a good luck charm. When he was 6, legendary hockey player coach Ban Ludwig noticed Benjamin and wanted to train him. Benjamin was in bliss getting to train under a legendary coach and improve his game. His parents alternated coming to all his practices to just be there in support of their son, plus they both went to all his games when they could. He took a liking to defense because he felt it helped more. He was not really good at it to begin but he practiced day in and day out to get better. His coach put him in contact with the manager of the traveling hockey team, the Hokey Pokey Lions, Boogers Mcgee. He started at age 12 and traveled all over while being home schooled. He didn’t fair to well his first season, but hard work and practice evolved him into the player he is today.

 

School wise, his parents pulled him out of school after 2^nd grade to be homeschooled so he could focus on his hockey game. They made sure he still kept in touch with his friends he made to build social skills. Benjamin excelled in math based classes but struggled in anything that required writing. He put in the hard work on and off the ice and managed to graduate high school at 16 with a 3.85 GPA. He plans to try and take some college courses if he gets drafted to further his education. He wants to get into traffic engineering as a backup plan. He fell in love with just trying to understand the traffic light patterns at intersections.

 

Hobby wise, Benjamin loves to bowl, compete in combat robotics as well as enjoys watching all kinds of racing. At age 13 he became the first person to win a golden dumpster at an event in Toronto, with a non-kinetic energy robot. When time allows, he still fine tunes that robot and competes when he can. His goal is when he makes it to the VHL he wants to give back and sponsor some tournaments to help the youth get involved in STEM. Racing wise, his dad brought him to an F1 Race in Montreal when they were down their for a hockey game the week prior. It became Benjamin’s second love. He loved watching F1, Indycar, Nascar, IMSA, and Monster Trucks. It was hard to watch stuff live because of all the hockey training, but when he had some free time, he always would try to catch highlights or watch race replays online.  Bowling wise he averages about 164, he tries to go when time allows it but with all his hobbies plus hockey it’s hard. He doesn’t get to see his teammates at league a bunch because he has to prebowl, but when he does they always have a blast. What he enjoys about all of his hobbies is the fact that its all different groups. Just seeing the social aspect of all the groups is a true learning experience, that he wants to put towards growing himself and others.

 

A funny thing about his racing hobby is that one of the kids he met through travel hockey, Nathan Ecker, also has a love for racing. So anytime they saw each other they would make time to chit chat about what was going on in the world of racing

 

His favorite food, as his nick name shows, is pulled pork. He loves bacon as well, but no wear near as much as pulled pork. After travel games, He would actually try to get the coach to go to a local bbq place if there were any near the travel game arena to get a taste of it. He actually saved up to get a smoker at his house. He brings pulled pork to team training once a week, so they can enjoy what he loves.

 

Fun fact about Benjamin is the bond between that he built with Nathan Ecker over racing and was one of the main reasons that he signed with the Houston Bulls. He wanted to continue the friendship that they had plus anytime he could talk about racing was a plus. He just had to make sure to get to training in time was always an issue Benjamin had, needed one more minute before they left house.

[Nathan_8 231]

Bunch of great chats about racing back in the day porkinator