Rauno Palo - Biography [1/2]

[jRuutu 2,302]

 

 

Early days

 

Rauno Palo was born in Vaasa, Finland - 13th of October in 1999 to Veikko and Jasmine Palo. At the time, his birth was celebrated as a small miracle, when Rauno was born, he had a full mustache on him, which caused people to think if Rauno was more than just your average kid, could he be some kind of holy kid that has special powers? News about the holy kid born in Vaasa started spreading during the first few days after Rauno´s birth. Naturally the local media tried to feature the whole Palo family in multiple stories and articles, but it was all for nothing, the family demanded privacy and only gave one interview, in that interview Veikko said that Rauno is not going to save the world, he is going to be a hockey player.

 

From there on the family of three lived fairly normal life in Vaasa. Veikko worked as a bouncer and Jasmine was a stay at home mom, who worked part time on the local circus as the bearded lady. Jasmine and her unusual job made her a minor celebrity in Vaasa, many suspect that Rauno inherited his almost supernatural facial hair genes from her. Growing up as the hairy kid with a hairy mom was not easy, Rauno had to shave his face every other day, that helped to tone down the comments from other kids especially.

 

Hockey and sports in general played big part on the daily life in the Palo household. During summer time, volleyball and football were popular and when winter came, it was time to focus on hockey.

 

Vaasan Sport

 

Team that these days plays in Liiga, the highest level in Finland. Vaasan Sport was and still is Veikko Palo´s favorite team. Quite interestingly, Veikko remembers seeing Jasmine in Vaasan Sport game years before they actually met for the first time. Either way, only natural that when Rauno was eight years old and when he joined his first team, it was the Vaasan Sport and their U-10 junior team. Same team where Veikko used to play in as a kid long time ago.

 

From early on it was clear that Rauno had all the tools to be a hockey player some day, he was the tallest and biggest kid who could simply use the larger frame to dominate games and on top of that, his understanding of the game was a lot more developed than most kids. Did not take too long for him to be moved all the way to U-14 team, there he could play with and against players who were closer to him physically. Eight year old getting moved up to the U-14 team was something that was never seen before, once again the media showed interest towards Rauno Palo. He was featured in a local newspaper as the next big thing in hockey. Nothing too exciting happened after that and the next years were typical for any kid, school and just having fun while playing hockey.

 

School

 

Rauno was never a big fan of school, he did the absolute minimum to get by. Jasmine and Veikko tried to push him to focus on the school work, but only thing Rauno really put any effort in was hockey. When Rauno was 14, he almost failed to pass eight grade, turned out that he skipped last few hours of school multiple times to go and play hockey in the local rink, resulting in him failing multiple classes, but he worked hard during the summer and got shown mercy, he moved on to the ninth grade with the others. Jasmine and Veikko were not pleased to hear how their only son is putting all eggs into one basket and focusing so heavily into hockey that it effects the school work, but there was very little they could tell to Rauno, he was determined to play hockey on professional level. If you take the lack of interest towards school out of the picture, Rauno was a good kid. Rarely got into trouble and always helped around the house if something needed to be done, he just wanted to play hockey more than anything.

 

Towards the dream

 

At the age of 15 Rauno practiced with the first team of Vaasan Sport for the first time. At the time Sport´s coach was Reino Köyri, tough but fair coach who had been following Rauno´s progress for some time already. In the practice Palo´s defensive abilities really caught the eye of Köyri, he said that he has never seen a 15 year old play like that. From there on few times per week Rauno practiced with the first team while playing in the junior league.

 

Despite showing a lot of promise as a player and performing well in the practice, Rauno had to wait over a year before finally making his professional debut at the age of 17. Reino Köyri later commented how he did not want to rush Palo and that is the reason why he waited for so long before putting him on the ice in Liiga. Good thing that he waited though, Rauno showed that he is right at home while playing against grown men, in 50 games he scored 25 points, 5+20. After the rookie year in Liiga and with Vaasan Sport, Palo moved to VHLM. Oslo Storm signed the talented center.

 

Start to life in Oslo was not easy, the first time Rauno spent more than few days away from Veikko and Jasmine, then everything that cames with living abroad really tested the young man, but despite all the off ice turbulance, Rauno was able to show tremendous progress on the ice. Moving to VHLM was the right choice for Palo, he got to learn the North-American style of hockey and show to everybody what kind of player he is, 72 games with 35+55, the 6th best total in the whole league! Oslo made the playoffs that year and in the end managed to win championship in front of Yukon Rush who were a heavy favorite after the regular season.

 

Next in line was the VHL draft, great individual season in Oslo pushed Palo up in the rankings, multiple teams were rumoured to be interested, eventually at fourth overall Quebec Meute picked Palo as the first center in the whole draft.

 

What happens next? Only time will tell...

 

(1050)

 

[bagelbitesisbae 71]

There were a few grammatical errors, and I felt that it could've been laid out nicer. Also, more pictures would've been nice to go along with your player biography!