Longtime friends Jason Foltz and Kevin Bite reunite with Liberty hockey

Liberty defenseman Kevin Bite’s arrival on the Flames D1 hockey team is more than a mere continuation of his college hockey career — it’s a reunion between him and longtime friend, senior forward Jason Foltz.

Foltz and Bite may wear the same sweater on the ice for Liberty and skate on the same power play unit, but their roots run much deeper than that. When Bite and Foltz think of their relationship, they think back to their childhood in Atlanta, Georgia.

Bite first moved to the United States from Riga, Latvia at the age of 5. Once his family settled into a new life in the South, it was time to lace the skates back up. The 8-year-old Latvian joined his first competitive hockey team, the Atlanta Fire, where he came across a young Foltz. 

Coached by former Braves pitcher, Baseball Hall-of-Famer and 4th-round NHL draft pick Tom Glavine, their time on the Fire was just the beginning of a life in the game. 

One of their fondest hockey memories came in the years they played alongside one another in the PeeWee Quebec tournament, the biggest peewee hockey tournament in the world. Each year, the Fire would attend, and Foltz and Bite would stay with the same billet family.

“Wherever you go for a tournament, some families would volunteer to take kids. They were billet families,” Foltz said. “(In) our billet, the mom knew no English. (Bite and I) would just go play pond hockey together, and we were together for that for the whole week.” 

The ponds of Quebec soon turned into a roller hockey rink, where Foltz and Bite played together in the offseason. Though their time on ice together came to a halt when they reached 15U, they’d always find their way back to each other in the summertime. 

“We went our separate ways when we turned 15,” Bite recounted. “But every summer we would get together to play roller (hockey) and be best friends again (and) be with each other the entire time.”

Their junior hockey careers pulled them in different directions — Foltz stayed south to play for the Atlanta Knights, while Bite took off to the Northeast, donning the sweater of the New England Wolves. Despite the distance, the one thing that never changed was their bond.  

“It’d be like that thing when you go to school and you don’t talk to the one friend back home the whole time you’re there but when you come home, you hang out all the time,” Foltz said. “That was us.”

The two always hoped they’d take the ice together again one day, but when Foltz found his place in Lynchburg and Bite committed to play for the NCAA D3 Johnson & Wales Wildcats, it seemed apparent that the hopes weren’t destined to come to fruition. 

That is, until Bite decided to come to watch his former friend play in person. 

A 22-year-old Bite made the 55-minute drive from Providence, Rhode Island to Marlborough, Massachusetts in mid-March this past spring to see the Flames meet the Minot State Beavers center ice in a Final Four battle. 

While Foltz’s Flames fell shy of the win, something successful still unfolded that day. 

“I came there, met up with (Foltz), saw a bunch of the guys and saw them play for the first time. That was the cherry on top for me deciding to come here,” Bite said.

Shortly after the tournament, Foltz shot his friend a text asking if he was finally thinking about becoming a Flame. 

“He was joking about it after the game, he sent me a text and was like, so you’re going to come to Liberty now next year or something? I said, ‘Yeah, actually I was going to talk to you about that,’” Bite said. 

Bite gave Foltz the “yes” he had long been waiting for and before the two knew it, they were reunited in the rink. 

“It was weird seeing him on the ice because even in the summer, I never really skated with him, so I haven’t seen him in ice hockey gear in like six years or something like that,” Foltz said. “It was weird, but the chemistry is still there.”

Foltz and Bite specifically feel the chemistry plays to their advantage when on the power play, a unit they play on alongside each other. 

“You just know where the other one is when we’re out there together,” Bite said. “We don’t have to think at all. It’s just like I know in the back of my head where he’s going to be on the ice … He’s always there and the other way around.”

The unique connection pays dividends on the ice for a team eyeing its first ACHA

National Title in program history. More importantly, however, it offers the chance for two best friends to finally experience the ebbs, flows and sheer thrill of college hockey side by side. 

Cory is the sports editor for the Liberty Champion. Follow her on X