When Josh Sherman and Jack Sherman visited Thailand in 2017, the brothers who grew up playing ice hockey in Berks County had little idea how their favorite sport and their trip to Southeast Asia would go on to change the course of their lives.
Several years later, the pair now live in Thailand and coach youth ice hockey to the next generation — halfway across the globe.
“We found this perfect pocket of heaven (where) we can achieve everything that makes us happy,” Jack said. “There’s no reason for us to do anything else but just living the dream.”
Josh and Jack graduated from Exeter, where they played ice hockey on the school’s club team. They also played with the Reading Junior Royals and the Lancaster Firebirds during their youth careers.
Jack went on to play for the club team at Kutztown University, where he earned an undergraduate degree in 2017. Josh graduated from Temple in 2014, before joining Jack at Kutztown on the club hockey team while completing his master’s degree.
“I saw it as an opportunity to play hockey again,” Josh said about playing at Kutztown. “It just seemed like the perfect opportunity to get playing again.”
After Josh earned master’s degrees from both Temple and Kutztown, he began teaching in the Philadelphia School District. He also began his coaching career as a youth baseball coach, where he fell in love with guiding younger athletes.
“I really enjoyed that element of mentoring and teaching outside of the classroom,” Josh said. “I always felt from that initial coaching experience, coaching would be a part of my future.”
While he was teaching and coaching, Josh used his summer breaks to travel internationally with Jack. After going to Israel and around Europe in 2016, the pair decided to visit a friend in Thailand in 2017.
During his first trip to the country, Josh immediately fell in love with the nation.
“I had this underlying dream of teaching abroad,” he said. “After visiting Thailand, I enjoyed my time here so much that by the time I was leaving, I was already asking questions about what it would be like to work here.”
With his dual master’s degrees in teaching and school leadership, Josh decided to make the leap to Thailand in June 2018 and was able to get a job teaching history at an international school in Chiang Mai, a city located in the northern part of the country. The private schools serve students from preschool through 12th grade and provide students with a multicultural, diverse learning experience.
While he initially thought he would be there for a year or two, Josh taught at the school and served as its athletic director for two years. He was then promoted to human resources director at a new sister international school, where he continues to work.
Not long after moving to Thailand, Josh discovered the local ice rink in Chiang Mai, a city with a population of 127,240. He began to play in games and make connections within the local hockey community.
Josh eventually was invited to help coach a private lesson and later a full team practice. After coaching his first practice, the Chiang Mai Ice Hockey team asked if he could begin coaching the youth team every week.
“The hockey happened to be here waiting for us right at the perfect time,” Josh said. “It was definitely a bit of luck.”
While Josh was enjoying his career at the international school and coaching youth hockey in Chiang Mai, Jack decided to stay put in the United States. While he enjoyed his visit to Thailand in 2017, he was not ready to move there.
“I felt like it wasn’t for me,” Jack said. “It was a little too drastic of a change for me.”
Jack remained in the U.S. until the summer of 2019, when Josh returned to Berks County for a visit and began convincing his brother to move to Chiang Mai.
“He was pushing me pretty hard,” Jack said. “I (figured) I might as well go give it a try.”
Jack decided to move in with his brother in July 2019, and immediately began coaching youth hockey, too. After a few weeks, Jack felt right at home in northern Thailand.
“It was just a dream come true,” Jack said. “This is my new home.”
Jack received a stroke of luck early during his time in the country, as the local hockey rink was purchased by the parents of the players on the Chiang Mai ice hockey team from a large conglomerate. This allowed Jack to qualify for a work visa through the local hockey rink, securing his long-term future in the country.
With Jack coaching full time and Josh coaching part time in the evenings, the brothers set out to grow ice hockey in the tropical climate of Chiang Mai, where the average high temperature is 90 degrees. Thailand sits just north of the equator, and only three cities in the country of more than 66 million people have ice rinks with organized hockey.
“There’s a lot of incentive for these people to keep my brother and I here because we’re developing their kids,” Josh said. “They want their kids to be on the Thai national team.”
With the only youth ice hockey team in the northern part of the country, the brothers began developing the local players. They recognized very early that while many had some skill, they had little idea how to actually play the team sport.
“We were really surprised at how skilled (they were),” Josh said. “The kids can play hockey, but what we found was their hockey IQ and understanding of the game and how to work together to accomplish a goal, how to be in the correct position — hockey sense — (was) almost non-existent.”
With a collection of players 11-18 years old, the brothers began building teams in various age groups. Using the knowledge from their playing careers, the pair taught the kids the game’s fundamentals and began to see success.
“When people see the product of our coaching, when they see these kids just absolutely dominant, lightyears beyond their peers, that’s where we’re really getting the recognition,” Josh said. “That’s definitely been really exciting.”
The pair led the team to the 2020 U14 national championship. In 2021, the guided a team to the U18 national championship with players they had been developing for three years.
“That was pretty awesome,” Josh said about winning the U18 national title. “That was our biggest accomplishment. That proves that we have the best youth players in the country.”
After growing the sport in Chiang Mai for several years, they now have 15-20 players 11-18 years old who play in games, and another 10-15 players ages 6-10 who just train. The brothers enter teams in various age groups, and utilize loaner players from Bangkok and Hat Yai, Thailand, to fill rosters if needed.
“We’ve coached and played with so many of these loaner players, we already have a good understanding of their skillset,” Josh said. “We’re able to put together a coherent team.”
The level of success has not come without challenges, however. Due to the expensive costs of hockey gear in the country as a result of a hefty import tax, as well as the cost of maintaining ice in the tropical nation, it has been difficult to expose new people to the sport.
“It’s an elitist sport,” Josh said. “It’s virtually inaccessible to the middle class here. You’re only getting certain types of people that are able to financially access the sport.”
The intense, physical nature of ice hockey also directly clashes with Thai culture, which places a heavy emphasis on respect and politeness. This has made coaching the violent sport to the people of Thailand quite challenging.
“When they saw this intensity from us, both in the sport and outside of the sport, it was quite shocking and quite culturally inappropriate,” Josh said. “This has been a persistent issue that we still deal with.”
Despite the clash of cultures, the pair still try to coach their players the way they were coached in their early years.
“We grew up in the American hockey culture, and we’re trying to bring that to them too,” Jack said. “It just has to be watered down a little bit.”
Despite the challenges, the brothers’ success has not gone unnoticed around the country. They already have coached three players who have gone on to play with the Thailand men’s national hockey team, and Josh earned the opportunity to serve as an assistant coach for the U20 men’s national team, which is based in Bangkok, for several weeks.
“We’ve become so successful in winning tournaments and training players, and the people in Bangkok have noticed,” Jack said. “We have players that play on the Bangkok teams that fly to Chiang Mai and stay for weeks at a time specifically to come and train with both of us.”
In the short term, the pair hope to win another youth national championship with Chiang Mai this upcoming season.
“We’re hoping this year we can three-peat as national champions,” Josh said. “Any time we win a national championship, regardless of what age group it is, it’s a huge accolade.”
In the long term, the brothers hope to elevate the level of play across the country and feed top players to both the men’s and women’s national teams. The Thai men’s team is ranked 46th in the world by the International Ice Hockey Federation, the highest ranked country in Southeast Asia.
“Over time, you are going to see a natural development of all of Thai hockey,” Josh said. “If you don’t have top-tier youth athletes playing hockey, you’re not going to have top-tier adult athletes playing hockey.”
In several years, the brothers estimate that a substantial amount of the men’s national team roster will have grown up playing for the Chiang Mai Ice Hockey team under the guidance of Josh and Jack.
“It took years for us to get to this point,” Josh said. “We’re just excited to continue the success.”
With so many elite players moving up through the ranks, the pair said that they would one day love to coach their former players at the national level.
“Our goal here is to someday be involved with any of the national teams,” Jack said. “To coach one of these teams, it’d be a dream come true.”
However, the pair are not in any hurry to stop coaching youth hockey.
“We’re on a reign of terror and success with our kids right now,” Jack said. “We don’t want it to stop, and we don’t see it stopping.”
Outside of hockey, the brothers have found a home in Chiang Mai, more than 8,000 miles from Reading. The new setting and new life have brought Josh, 30, and Jack, 27, closer together.
“We just find comfort in having each other,” Jack said. “We don’t have our hometown friends that we grew up with, but we have each other and we find comfort in that.”
After several years in Thailand, both brothers reflected on their life-changing move.
“I just wanted to experience things in the world and different cultures,” Josh said. “Everything just worked out more perfectly than I ever could imagine after choosing to do it here. This is the most monumental thing that either of us have ever done.”
And while their experiences in Thailand have been life-changing, it has also taught the brothers a valuable life lesson.
“The more risks you’re willing to take, you just get lucky sometimes,” Josh said. “If you push your comfort zones, you end up getting comfortable being uncomfortable. The fear of the unknown becomes the excitement of the unknown.”
