CBC senior forward Bud Winter was destined to become a standout, groomed as soon as he could walk by his father.

At age 3, the elder Winter, who also goes by Bud, got his son started in the right direction by purchasing him the necessary tool for athletic stardom.

A surfboard.

"When he was little all he wanted to do was go in the water," Dad said. "So, I got him a board and he went crazy with it. I figured I had a big-time surfer dude on my hands."

Not quite.

Winter, who grew up in Jupiter, Florida, before moving to St. Louis at age 10, cherished his forays into the Atlantic Ocean, just down the street from the family residence. He learned all the moves, and before dad knew it, his son was executing the standard surfer moves with surprising ease.

Then fate intervened.

Little Bud, at the urging of a neighbor, decided to try roller hockey — not exactly a popular activity in eastern Florida.

But Winter took to it like a duck to water. After a few weeks, he felt more comfortable with a stick in hand.

So long, Brian Wilson. Hello, NHL prospect.

"It's kind of funny, but I immediately loved it," Winter said of hockey. "It was so much more fun."

That was the start of love affair that has taken Winter to rinks all over the country.

Winter recently completed a stellar hockey career at CBC with his third successive Mid-States Club Hockey Association championship.

He scored a team-high 24 goals to help the Cadets pick up their record 16th overall title.

That performance helped earn the 6-foot-3 sniper honors as the Post-Dispatch All-Metro hockey player of the year.

Winter finished his high school career with 81 goals and 68 assists. He led the team in goals all three years he was a regular on the varsity. The Cadets were 86-8 the last three campaigns.

"Every year, he just kept becoming a bigger and bigger piece to the puzzle," CBC coach John Jost said. "This season, he was definitely 'The Guy.' "

Winter excelled in important games. He scored twice to kick-start the Cadets to a 4-1 win over SLUH in the championship game. The previous contest, he recorded a hat trick in a 6-1 semifinal series clinching win over Edwardsville.

But Winter really took charge this season. He scored eight times in the final four games and carried the team on its back during a mid-season rough patch.

"Whenever we needed a big goal or a big shift out of somebody, Bud was the guy that stepped up," CBC junior goalie Jack Caruso said. "We couldn't have asked for more from him."

The Cadets won 96 of 101 games games prior to this campaign and were far and away the best team in the league for three years running. But CBC struggled at times this season and came into postseason play seeded second behind the Jr. Bills, who were aching to get revenge after losing to CBC in the championship game the previous two seasons.

The veteran Winter helped the Cadets keep the championship run intact.

"Sometimes, as captain, you have to lead by example," Winter said. "We all just picked up our games when we had to."

Jost said Winter provided one of the turning points with a shorthanded goal that helped CBC knock off SLUH 4-1 in a late regular-season game Jan. 20. SLUH won the first two Municipal Division contests between the rivals.

But the tally, which came off some grunt work by Clayton Dawe, served as a wakeup call.

"It got our confidence going again," Caruso said. "We really needed it."

Winter whipped a quick shot from the right side into a tiny opening over the glove of the goaltender.

"He's done a lot of things that had me shaking my head and saying, 'How did he do that?' " Jost said. "That was another one."

The goal seemed to return swagger to the Cadets.

They were on fire the rest of the way, culminating with the title win at Scottrade Center.

"It was great season even though we had a few hiccups," Winter said. "But we knew all along what we had and how good we could be. And we proved it in the end."

Winter is extremely quick for a player his size. He has an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time.

Yet he still answers questions about his Florida-based hockey upbringing.

"I've had a lot of people ask me how I could learn hockey in Florida," Winter says. "It wasn't as hard as you might think."

Winter spent his first five seasons playing hockey on roller skates. It was there he learned the fundamentals.

"It's a slower game and there's no hitting," he said. "But it's the same concept. It allowed me to work more on my stick-handling and other parts of my game."

Winter first hit the ice around age 9 and quickly took to the speed and physical nature of the game.

Now, he is considered one of the top high school players in the Midwest.

He plans on playing junior hockey in the fall, at least for a year in hopes of gaining a college scholarship. Sioux City of the Tier-1 United States Hockey League has drafted him and Corpus Christi of the Tier-2 North American Hockey League has shown plenty of interest. A junior league in British Columbia, Canada, also is a possibility.

Winter is looking forward to the challenge after an eye-opening high school career.

And should hockey not work out, he could always drag out the old surfboard.

"It's hockey for me the rest of the way," Winter said. "It's a huge part of my life."

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