Mark Pryor, original player at inaugural Stan Mikita Hockey School for the Hearing Impaired passes away at age 67.

September 9, 2026

Mark Pryor, an original player who attended the very first Stan Mikita Hockey School for the Hearing Impaired, passed away on September 9, 2026, at the age of 67.

In the summer of 1973, at just fourteen years old, Mark was among the first group of deaf and hard-of-hearing players to attend the inaugural Stan Mikita Hockey School for the Hearing Impaired — the camp that would become AHIHA. That week in Chicago gave him a team, a community, and a lifelong home on the ice. He never left the family it created.

Two years later, Mark pulled on the USA sweater at the 1975 World Winter Games for the Deaf in Lake Placid. Skating alongside fellow AHIHA pioneers — including Lex Tiahnybik — he helped Team USA earn a silver medal in men’s ice hockey.

Mark returned to AHIHA not only as a player but as a staff member, giving back the same welcome, instruction, and belonging that had been given to him. For more than fifty years he remained a teammate in the truest sense — on the ice, on the bench, and in the lives of the players who came after him.

Those who skated with Mark remember a lifetime friend: loyal, generous with his time, and fiercely proud of the AHIHA community and of the game that bound it together. In later years he was a familiar, smiling presence in an RIT Hockey hoodie, still carrying the same love of the sport he first found as a boy in that blue AHIHA sweater.

Mark’s life was a quiet testament to AHIHA’s mission — confidence, self-esteem, and goals beyond hockey. He lived that mission as a player, as staff, and as a friend. He will be missed by his AHIHA family, his teammates, and all who shared the ice with him.