We all have an embarrassing story that sticks with us. We've all made little mistakes, errors in judgment or oversights that have a way of haunting us for days, months or years thereafter. Ok, some of us make a couple or even a few of them over the course of our lives. I happen to be one of those rare but not so unique multiple offenders. Cuz ya see, I'm part of a not so rare breed "homo hominis". I'm a man with all the natural faults that title bequeaths.
Some of my finest and admittedly infamous moments have occurred at the multitude of hockey tournaments we've attended over the last ten years.
The first unflattering tale that I really shouldn't, but will share at my own peril, occurred at one of the Devil's tournaments in Aylmer, Ontario. Tournaments mean hotel stays, which more often than not are the actual highlights of the tournaments. The choice of hotel is based on a combination of its amenities (i.e. does it have a pool or better yet a water slide?) and its proximity to the rinks the team will be competing at. Now for this particular tournament in rural southwestern Ontario, the rinks were quite spread out and this will become an important part of this story. This tournament was scheduled for at least two and possibly three days beginning on a wintery Friday in January. This translates to a guaranteed three and possibly four or five games depending on results. The Devil's team played well enough in its first three games, two wins and a loss if memory serves, to advance to the semi-finals, which were to be played at 7:00am on Sunday morning. On a side note, the team was struck by a virus that had the team possibly playing its fourth game in three days with only 11 or 12 of its original seventeen players. Now here's where the story goes a little sideways for me so be sure to pay attention.
The rink for the already early game on Sunday morning was a full half hour drive from our hotel. The girls needed to be woken at 5:30am and ushered out into the sub-zero temperatures for the trip to the rink. This after having played on Saturday night and not getting back to the hotel and into bed until close to 10pm. We parents may have stayed up an hour or two later chatting and consuming the odd alcoholic beverage in the hotel hallway (another fine hockey tournament tradition). My wife and the Boy would be staying behind in the hotel so they need not suffer the lack of sleep or warmth. Having never really been to that part of the province, I would need to make sure I followed someone out to this foreign hockey rink.
5:30am may as well have been 2:00am as the Devil and I wearily made our way out to our frozen, but warming mini-van waiting out in the parking lot behind the two-storey hotel. I tossed the Devil's hockey bag into the back of the van and tucked her carefully into the back seat wrapped in a couple of blankets to buffer Jack Frost's icy grip.
The van was understandably encrusted in frost so I set to work with a scraper. I wanted to have at least half a chance of seeing where I was going. I kept a close eye on the father and daughter I would be following over to the rink in order to make sure I didn't lose them and myself in the process. I hopped in the van and away we went. There was one necessary, traditional stop to make on our way to the rink. I pulled up to the Tim Horton's drive-thru and barked my order for a large black through the frozen air to the obliging attendant. I didn't even bother asking the Devil if she wanted anything as she lay soundly asleep behind me and generally wasn't one for pre-game meals; particularly not at 5:45am. She needed every bit of rest she could get if she was going to help her team move on to the tournament finals.
My first sip of coffee did provide some degree of the much needed thawing and awakening effect. I followed my guide closely for the next 25 minutes through winding roads and a succession of left and right back-roads turns. I was pretty sure I never would have found the rink on my own in the dark of the early morning.
Arriving at the rink I jumped out and summoned the Devil. She didn't rise from her slumber immediately so I beckoned again, this time with a little more force. Still no movement in the rear of the vehicle. What I experienced next can only properly be described as a combination of shock and abject fear. I opened the side door of the van and suddenly realized the Devil's lack of movement was due to her lack of....presence. I now shouted her name a couple of times. There was a blanket, but no child. Had she been somehow abducted right beneath my nose? Had she vanished into thin air like some sick magician's twisted illusion? Where the hell was she?
I raced over to my guide's car and quickly reported that my daughter was missing. He naturally asked, "What do you mean?"
"I mean she's not in the back of the goddamned van!" I was more than a bit frantic and I'm not sure of the exact chain of events that followed, but I believe I turned on my cell phone to call back to the hotel to let my wife know that I had lost our daughter; but not quite sure how to deliver that scary message. I hadn't turned on my mobile phone prior to that point because who would need to call me at 6:00am in the morning as I was driving out in the middle of nowhere. And now here, the middle of nowhere brought with it a total lack of cellular signal. At this point, I pondered jumping back in my van and racing back to the hotel and perhaps stopping at a local police station to file a missing person's alert. My mind was racing.
However, before I had a chance to do that the team manager pulled into the rink parking lot with his child in tow. He called me over to his vehicle and with a smirk that grew into what felt like derisive laughter asked me if I was "missing" something? As it turns out, he had turned on his cell phones, had received a signal as well as a call from my understandably upset spouse who quickly reported that I had left without our daughter.
"I WHAT? I DID NOT!" was all I could muster. The manager assured me that I had indeed left without my daughter, but that she was still on her way to the rink courtesy of another family. And so, I hung my head, grabbed her gear and headed into the rink to wait with and be ridiculed vociferously by the other parents as the story spread like wildfire. Each set of parents seemed to arrive with a new stinging barb for me. I tried to jab back with quips like, "At least I got her gear here safely!", but I knew all too well there was no way I would ever live this down. Eventually, the Devil, in her own bewildered sense of disbelief arrived with the other family and told the her side of the story.
It seems that the chilly morning air got the best of the Devil. She decided while I was scraping the front window of the van to saunter back across the hotel parking lot, up the stairs and into the warm embrace of her blissfully sleeping mother. After five or ten minutes, and yes the timeline is a little sketchy here, mommy convinced the Devil to head back downstairs where I was no doubt anxiously awaiting her return. But the Devil would be back rapping on the hotel room door a minute or so later with her own somber report, "Daddy forgot me!"
"HE DID WHAT? HE DID NOT! DON'T BE RIDICULOUS!"
Mommy threw on a robe and ran down the stairs to verify the Devil's unwitting discovery. Luckily, I and my guide had been among the first to leave the hotel. One family of five was still in the parking lot and my wife was quick to flag them down to beg for a ride. This would have been fine save for the fact that they only had a five seat van and now they needed to accommodate a sixth passenger. They decided the best course of action would be to strap the Devil safely into one of their five seats the mother in the group would ride with the gear in the back. Yet another dagger in my already severely embarrassed heart.
The game that fateful, freezing Sunday morning would be the Devil's team's last that weekend as their depleted squad put up a good fight, but succumbed to a fuller local team. We were all pretty sure the other team had more healthy players, more sleep in their own beds and none of the self-afflicted drama I had unintentionally introduced. But hey, I already explained the whole male human thing and every couple of weeks and/or months since someone has a chuckle at my expense. And, as mentioned, this is not the only one.
#imahockeydad
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
One day left...sort of
Tomorrow is officially the last day of my involvement with organized minor hockey for at least a few weeks. Both the Boy and the Devil have been selected to teams for the 2010-2011 season and my duties as a convenor end with the final set of tryouts for the lowest division coming to an end.
In driving to a recent convening engagement, I realized over the last six weeks I have been associated in one way or another with the tryout processes of 11 teams (2 Minor Midget boys teams via the Boy, 3 Bantam girls teams via the Devil, 3 Minor Bantam boys teams as a convenor, 1 Midget girls team as an evaluator, 1 Minor Midget boys team as an evaluator/on-ice helper and 1 Bantam girls team as an on-ice helper.) I'm not even quite sure how I managed to be cajoled into all of these; but apparently my inability to utter the word "NO" has something to do with it. I will say that each has had its share of stories, challenges and interesting outcomes. Tryout time is undoubtedly the worst and most stressful time of the year for players, parents and coaches alike. Over the last few weeks I've seen a pretty stark contrast of jubilation and disappointment; joy at being selected and anger at being rejected.
I think the most interesting story/situation to date has involved a coach and team on its final set of releases (cuts). Generally speaking, every effort is made to make sure released player's feelings are protected. The typical process has all players placed in one room in the arena and then called out randomly one-by-one to learn their fate from the head coach in another room. Those players who are selected to the team are asked to seclude themselves (along with their parents) from the rest of the players so it is not readily obvious to all in a public setting who has been selected and who has been released. With the particular team in question, as a soon-to-be released player was being ushered to the "chopping block" his parent commented to him that he already knew who had been selected for the position he was competing for. When the player asked his parent how he knew already the father quipped "It's called text messaging." In other words, even though we had sent a selected player (who coincidentally was for a time on the bubble himself) and his parent to seclusion to protect those still awaiting the final decision, they found it necessary to work around the process and subsequently put the feelings of at least a couple of other players at risk. Ahhh, technology has even found its way into the sacred hockey dressing room for better or, in this case, worse.
Back to those from my brood who both now officially have a place to play having gone through the aforementioned processes in full.
The Boy begins a fifth consecutive tour of duty with an A team; this year at the Minor Midget level. In keeping with the trends of the last several years, he will go into next season with only a handful of the same teammates from this past season. A couple moved up, a bunch moved down and another much larger bunch moved up. All of this due, in large part to the introduction of new coaches with player preferences, biases, opinions and existing relationships. At one point during the tryout process, the Boy was approached via text message from a teammate to "move down" and to remain on a team with his most recent teammates. But he decided with our support that he would let the process follow its "natural" course as he and we have always done. And so, the A team it is with some new teammates, coaches and parents to get to know.
The Devil, as previously reported, is now happily part of a Bantam BB team...for now. Girls hockey works a little differently in that there is actually an opportunity for a team to request classification after they play a few pre-season games intended to determine what level is most appropriate for them. I believe its a good system as ultimately the goal should be to have similarly skilled players and teams playing
against each other to ensure optimal challenge and development.
Now when I say no involvement in organized hockey, I should qualify that as there are already new team things happening; new team meetings, team building activities and plans for optional summer practices.
The Devil was unable to make her first team meeting as she had a previous commitment to her chosen Summer sport - soccer. We've never believed in 12 months of hockey so each gets to choose some other activity (other than TV or Xbox) to keep their minds and bodies active through the Summer. So mom went to the intro meeting to get the lowdown on team planning around the coaching staff, tournaments, volunteer opportunities and the assignment of numbers.
The assignment of numbers, while seemingly a simple notion, is invariably a process unto itself. Superstition and tradition no doubt have a part to play in this. The Boy, for instance, has been fortunate enough to be number 3 for as long as he's been playing the game (the same number his dear old dad donned as a youngster and ever since for that matter.) The Devil has not been as lucky and in fact has had a different number each of the last four years. She began her career with the number 6, which she was able to hold on to for a couple of years, but has since gone through 8, 18, 8, 6 and now this year way off track with the number 4. To her credit she has deferred to others in the past where there was a conflict. This year it was her mother's inability to win a coin flip that left her with a defenceman's number; albeit the number worn by arguably the best defenceman ever. And so for the first few games next year I will have to pay special attention and remember the players wearing number 6, 18 and 8 are not mine.
The other major order of business for any new team is fundraising. Fundraising is an integral part of the whole hockey experience as it helps offset some of the financial burden that the game puts on all of us. In girls hockey we have an opportunity to fundraise as much of our rep fees (approx $1,000) as we can. This past season we did a pretty good job selling frozen meat, collecting beer bottles & selling tickets to Junior hockey games and were pleasantly surprised with a sizable refund at the end of the year. The boys' association caps how much you can fundraise in an effort to ensure no one tries to buy their way on to a team. Like that would ever happen he says with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The rule is there because someone tried or did it.
As luck would have it, both of our kids teams this year are getting out of the chute early with a frozen meat fundraiser, the same meat fundraiser, to be run at precisely the same time. So I guess we'll apply as much of the sales as we can to the Devil's team...sorry Boy's team. To be fair, selling frozen meat just before bbq season, or any time of the year really, is relatively easy and guilt-free. There is significant value for the buyers who have the undeniable need to eat. The product is solid and we have several regular buyers who actually contact us if they haven't heard from us in a while.
And so we get a few weeks reprieve as we've already been told the Minor Midget A coach has plans for once-a-week summer practices. We go into the coming season with a coach we know is committed to hard work and dedication. We go forward with both teams with all the guarded optimism for all that is new.
And yet, I'm sure with one day left there will most certainly be at least one more story to tell.
#imahockeydad
In driving to a recent convening engagement, I realized over the last six weeks I have been associated in one way or another with the tryout processes of 11 teams (2 Minor Midget boys teams via the Boy, 3 Bantam girls teams via the Devil, 3 Minor Bantam boys teams as a convenor, 1 Midget girls team as an evaluator, 1 Minor Midget boys team as an evaluator/on-ice helper and 1 Bantam girls team as an on-ice helper.) I'm not even quite sure how I managed to be cajoled into all of these; but apparently my inability to utter the word "NO" has something to do with it. I will say that each has had its share of stories, challenges and interesting outcomes. Tryout time is undoubtedly the worst and most stressful time of the year for players, parents and coaches alike. Over the last few weeks I've seen a pretty stark contrast of jubilation and disappointment; joy at being selected and anger at being rejected.
I think the most interesting story/situation to date has involved a coach and team on its final set of releases (cuts). Generally speaking, every effort is made to make sure released player's feelings are protected. The typical process has all players placed in one room in the arena and then called out randomly one-by-one to learn their fate from the head coach in another room. Those players who are selected to the team are asked to seclude themselves (along with their parents) from the rest of the players so it is not readily obvious to all in a public setting who has been selected and who has been released. With the particular team in question, as a soon-to-be released player was being ushered to the "chopping block" his parent commented to him that he already knew who had been selected for the position he was competing for. When the player asked his parent how he knew already the father quipped "It's called text messaging." In other words, even though we had sent a selected player (who coincidentally was for a time on the bubble himself) and his parent to seclusion to protect those still awaiting the final decision, they found it necessary to work around the process and subsequently put the feelings of at least a couple of other players at risk. Ahhh, technology has even found its way into the sacred hockey dressing room for better or, in this case, worse.
Back to those from my brood who both now officially have a place to play having gone through the aforementioned processes in full.
The Boy begins a fifth consecutive tour of duty with an A team; this year at the Minor Midget level. In keeping with the trends of the last several years, he will go into next season with only a handful of the same teammates from this past season. A couple moved up, a bunch moved down and another much larger bunch moved up. All of this due, in large part to the introduction of new coaches with player preferences, biases, opinions and existing relationships. At one point during the tryout process, the Boy was approached via text message from a teammate to "move down" and to remain on a team with his most recent teammates. But he decided with our support that he would let the process follow its "natural" course as he and we have always done. And so, the A team it is with some new teammates, coaches and parents to get to know.
The Devil, as previously reported, is now happily part of a Bantam BB team...for now. Girls hockey works a little differently in that there is actually an opportunity for a team to request classification after they play a few pre-season games intended to determine what level is most appropriate for them. I believe its a good system as ultimately the goal should be to have similarly skilled players and teams playing
against each other to ensure optimal challenge and development.
Now when I say no involvement in organized hockey, I should qualify that as there are already new team things happening; new team meetings, team building activities and plans for optional summer practices.
The Devil was unable to make her first team meeting as she had a previous commitment to her chosen Summer sport - soccer. We've never believed in 12 months of hockey so each gets to choose some other activity (other than TV or Xbox) to keep their minds and bodies active through the Summer. So mom went to the intro meeting to get the lowdown on team planning around the coaching staff, tournaments, volunteer opportunities and the assignment of numbers.
The assignment of numbers, while seemingly a simple notion, is invariably a process unto itself. Superstition and tradition no doubt have a part to play in this. The Boy, for instance, has been fortunate enough to be number 3 for as long as he's been playing the game (the same number his dear old dad donned as a youngster and ever since for that matter.) The Devil has not been as lucky and in fact has had a different number each of the last four years. She began her career with the number 6, which she was able to hold on to for a couple of years, but has since gone through 8, 18, 8, 6 and now this year way off track with the number 4. To her credit she has deferred to others in the past where there was a conflict. This year it was her mother's inability to win a coin flip that left her with a defenceman's number; albeit the number worn by arguably the best defenceman ever. And so for the first few games next year I will have to pay special attention and remember the players wearing number 6, 18 and 8 are not mine.
The other major order of business for any new team is fundraising. Fundraising is an integral part of the whole hockey experience as it helps offset some of the financial burden that the game puts on all of us. In girls hockey we have an opportunity to fundraise as much of our rep fees (approx $1,000) as we can. This past season we did a pretty good job selling frozen meat, collecting beer bottles & selling tickets to Junior hockey games and were pleasantly surprised with a sizable refund at the end of the year. The boys' association caps how much you can fundraise in an effort to ensure no one tries to buy their way on to a team. Like that would ever happen he says with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The rule is there because someone tried or did it.
As luck would have it, both of our kids teams this year are getting out of the chute early with a frozen meat fundraiser, the same meat fundraiser, to be run at precisely the same time. So I guess we'll apply as much of the sales as we can to the Devil's team...sorry Boy's team. To be fair, selling frozen meat just before bbq season, or any time of the year really, is relatively easy and guilt-free. There is significant value for the buyers who have the undeniable need to eat. The product is solid and we have several regular buyers who actually contact us if they haven't heard from us in a while.
And so we get a few weeks reprieve as we've already been told the Minor Midget A coach has plans for once-a-week summer practices. We go into the coming season with a coach we know is committed to hard work and dedication. We go forward with both teams with all the guarded optimism for all that is new.
And yet, I'm sure with one day left there will most certainly be at least one more story to tell.
#imahockeydad
Sunday, May 2, 2010
The Older They Get
Had to take a bit of break from this chronicling business and just concentrate on BEING a hockey dad for a bit; not so much for the kids sake as for my own state of mind. Really just trying to sort stuff out in my own head so I could maybe regurgitate it back should the the Boy or the Devil come seeking explanations and solace. In retrospect, I am again seeing and realizing what I do pretty much every year around this time -- tryout time. The first thing I realize is that I manage to forget what these convoluted tryouts are like until they come up again a year later.
To start, I was standing in an arena this past week, quite apart from all the other expectant parents, because I was seething on behalf of the Devil, who was in the process of trying out for the third team. It was bad enough that we had to lean on the teachings of Jung and Freud just to get her to take the ice for tryouts with the top team. Now we were simply providing our most reassuring shoulders to get her to compete to make the third team..the second team skates still a stinging three-night blur that saw her relegated with little to no explanation.
She did, in fact, make the third team, though I would readily admit the player I watched and urged on betwixt the fingers shielding my eyes, was but a shadow of the enthusiastic young girl we've been used to watching. Two, or more specifically the last rejection, had most certainly taken its toll on her somewhat delicate psyche. Add to this the fact that she was taken hostage by some virus (flu-like symptoms that knocked her on her ass) just after the first of three skates that caused her to miss the second skate altogether. Fortunately, the coach of this third team had done his homework and gave her more than the benefit of the doubt as she battled through the last tryout. Post tryout he acknowledged her efforts to date, which he had recorded, as we all thanked him for looking beyond an admittedly weaker effort than what she was capable of delivering. Having made the cut, we optimistically look forward to a new season with a new coach and a mostly new set of teammates and parents.
The Boy on the other hand is another year older and another year wiser where hockey tryouts are concerned. So he wasn't as heart-broken, or at least he didn't show it, as he had been in years past when he experienced his release from a team he feels he should have made and belongs on. A team he knows he can compete on. The only part that likely stung a little was the fact that he didn't even make it past two of five scheduled skates.
Having been through several evaluations over the years, we both questioned the validity and efficacy of the drills this particular coach decided to employ. A lot of shooting which is great if you are evaluating goalies. Quite a bit of skating, which is typical and obviously demonstrates who can keep up. But little in the way of real-game situations. We suppose it is not really ours to say, but this is a brand new coach who has no experience with this particular group of players and you would assume that above all else he would want to figure out who could compete for the puck...on the boards, in the corners; where games at this age are won and lost. After getting the proverbial hook after skate two, the Boy reasoned that he didn't really want to play for a coach who was not able to effectively evaluate his skills or those of others he felt should likewise not have been cut.
In a similarly reasoned move, one of the Boy's teammates from the past few seasons actually pulled his helmet out of the ring of prospective selections for the top team when he looked around and realized the coach had cut a bunch of guys he wanted to play with.
And so, these young lads are all coming to realize that they are not going to the NHL. The most important thing in that case is that they have fun in the couple of years they have left playing minor hockey. Some, and I hope the Boy is among them, will continue to play midget, some level of junior hockey and then maybe in College or University.
Selfishly I'm just waiting to play in some rec league with the Boy. Based on his current post-game tardiness I am quite certain he is gearing up for the same. I can quite easily envision the two of us sitting side by each in tattered t-shirts, drenched in sweat (one of us much more so than the other), skates untied, hockey socks curled down around our ankles and frosty Coors lights in our hands. We'll recall the highlights and lowlights of the game just past, sling a few off colour jokes and look forward to next week. It won't be particularly good or fast hockey; but it won't need to be.
I caught a glimpse of this potential future earlier this year when me and my closest circle of friends entered our rag tag, once-a-year ball hockey, slo-pitch, drinking team, aptly named Stick U, in an annual charity ball hockey tournament down in Toronto. With a couple of regulars out due to injury or some unfathomable and unappreciated marital commitment, the Boy was called upon to fill in. Initially, at least one of my buddies wasn't too sure about how the Boy would fare in a rec "Mens" division. My pals and I of course still view our children as just that...children. But I was fairly confident the Boy would do ok. Of course, I had the foresight of having watched him grow on the ice over the last couple of years. Matching up on a line together in the first game, I proudly watched the Boy more than hold his own as he would continue to do through the rest of the tournament. The formerly ineffective Stick U squad posted its best record to date. Regardless the goals, scores and results, I had a blast playing with and watching my kid interact with some of my best friends.
I hope there will be many more such opportunities to share a rink, a bench, a dressing room and a beer or two with the Boy, the Devil or both. I'm sure it won't be long before both are out-skating, out-passing and out-shooting the Old Man. I'm also sure playing alongside either or both them will keep this old man from getting too old too quick.
#imahockeydad
To start, I was standing in an arena this past week, quite apart from all the other expectant parents, because I was seething on behalf of the Devil, who was in the process of trying out for the third team. It was bad enough that we had to lean on the teachings of Jung and Freud just to get her to take the ice for tryouts with the top team. Now we were simply providing our most reassuring shoulders to get her to compete to make the third team..the second team skates still a stinging three-night blur that saw her relegated with little to no explanation.
She did, in fact, make the third team, though I would readily admit the player I watched and urged on betwixt the fingers shielding my eyes, was but a shadow of the enthusiastic young girl we've been used to watching. Two, or more specifically the last rejection, had most certainly taken its toll on her somewhat delicate psyche. Add to this the fact that she was taken hostage by some virus (flu-like symptoms that knocked her on her ass) just after the first of three skates that caused her to miss the second skate altogether. Fortunately, the coach of this third team had done his homework and gave her more than the benefit of the doubt as she battled through the last tryout. Post tryout he acknowledged her efforts to date, which he had recorded, as we all thanked him for looking beyond an admittedly weaker effort than what she was capable of delivering. Having made the cut, we optimistically look forward to a new season with a new coach and a mostly new set of teammates and parents.
The Boy on the other hand is another year older and another year wiser where hockey tryouts are concerned. So he wasn't as heart-broken, or at least he didn't show it, as he had been in years past when he experienced his release from a team he feels he should have made and belongs on. A team he knows he can compete on. The only part that likely stung a little was the fact that he didn't even make it past two of five scheduled skates.
Having been through several evaluations over the years, we both questioned the validity and efficacy of the drills this particular coach decided to employ. A lot of shooting which is great if you are evaluating goalies. Quite a bit of skating, which is typical and obviously demonstrates who can keep up. But little in the way of real-game situations. We suppose it is not really ours to say, but this is a brand new coach who has no experience with this particular group of players and you would assume that above all else he would want to figure out who could compete for the puck...on the boards, in the corners; where games at this age are won and lost. After getting the proverbial hook after skate two, the Boy reasoned that he didn't really want to play for a coach who was not able to effectively evaluate his skills or those of others he felt should likewise not have been cut.
In a similarly reasoned move, one of the Boy's teammates from the past few seasons actually pulled his helmet out of the ring of prospective selections for the top team when he looked around and realized the coach had cut a bunch of guys he wanted to play with.
And so, these young lads are all coming to realize that they are not going to the NHL. The most important thing in that case is that they have fun in the couple of years they have left playing minor hockey. Some, and I hope the Boy is among them, will continue to play midget, some level of junior hockey and then maybe in College or University.
Selfishly I'm just waiting to play in some rec league with the Boy. Based on his current post-game tardiness I am quite certain he is gearing up for the same. I can quite easily envision the two of us sitting side by each in tattered t-shirts, drenched in sweat (one of us much more so than the other), skates untied, hockey socks curled down around our ankles and frosty Coors lights in our hands. We'll recall the highlights and lowlights of the game just past, sling a few off colour jokes and look forward to next week. It won't be particularly good or fast hockey; but it won't need to be.
I caught a glimpse of this potential future earlier this year when me and my closest circle of friends entered our rag tag, once-a-year ball hockey, slo-pitch, drinking team, aptly named Stick U, in an annual charity ball hockey tournament down in Toronto. With a couple of regulars out due to injury or some unfathomable and unappreciated marital commitment, the Boy was called upon to fill in. Initially, at least one of my buddies wasn't too sure about how the Boy would fare in a rec "Mens" division. My pals and I of course still view our children as just that...children. But I was fairly confident the Boy would do ok. Of course, I had the foresight of having watched him grow on the ice over the last couple of years. Matching up on a line together in the first game, I proudly watched the Boy more than hold his own as he would continue to do through the rest of the tournament. The formerly ineffective Stick U squad posted its best record to date. Regardless the goals, scores and results, I had a blast playing with and watching my kid interact with some of my best friends.
I hope there will be many more such opportunities to share a rink, a bench, a dressing room and a beer or two with the Boy, the Devil or both. I'm sure it won't be long before both are out-skating, out-passing and out-shooting the Old Man. I'm also sure playing alongside either or both them will keep this old man from getting too old too quick.
#imahockeydad
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