Tending the Goalie

The season started back in September. Since then, we’ve spent two nights a week plus almost every weekend, usually twice a weekend, at an ice rink. We have travelled more miles than I can think to count, spent countless hours in the car, packed and unpacked the hockey bags a thousand times, and experienced the typical highs and lows that come with rooting for a favorite team.

And now it is coming to an end.

While I am thrilled at the idea that our weekends will be somewhat freed up (at least the games will be more local and thus require less of our day), I suspect that I am going to experience some withdrawal and the emotions that go along with that. I have really enjoyed getting to know the kids and the parents on the team and I think we have all become friends. I certainly have spent more time with them than I have with any other friends I have. There is a bond that comes with all the time and energy we expend on behalf of our boys and the team as a whole.

Since we don’t live near most of the team and none of the boys go to school with my son, he won’t have regular contact with them during the off-season. And he is one of only 4 boys on the team that is aging up next season, so he won’t be playing with this group again. I know that we’ll bond again with whichever team he plays on next year, but seeing as this was our first time on a travel team of this intensity, I think we will always remember our Squirt B teammates as a special group.

It is not over quite yet, we still have one more tournament to go. So I plan to go and enjoy every minute and revel in the camaraderie that results from a group focused on one goal – the success and well-being of our favorite team.

So for one last time this season – GOOOOOOOO DOGS!!!

Having participated in organized (and not so organized) sports my whole life, I am a firm believer that you learn much about life from sports. There are so many life lessons that I think we can learn from both individual and team sports that I could ramble on forever. I’ll start with just one today.

You can’t be great every day, but you can always give it your best. We’ve all had those days when everything goes right and we feel great, we know we look great, the presentation or test or race or whatever we have on the schedule that day goes even better than we hoped – we have a great day. In sports, it happens when you are ON. You make the saves or score the goals or set a PR or hit the target. It may not even feel like you have to exert much effort on these days, you just move and things go your way.

Everything clicks.

The lesson to realize is that these days are few and far between. Most days, we are less than perfect. We make mistakes and we don’t score. Our hair looks funny and we forget to bring some important papers to a meeting. What is important, on those more typical days, is that even though we may not be having a great day, we still need to give it our all. Doing your best and not quite getting there is so much better than phoning it in. Even if both get you to the same place – knowing you tried is so much better than knowing you didn’t. I’ve been trying to explain this to my son, who had one of those “great” games yesterday followed by a loss today. He got caught up in the high of the “great” and found the fall back to normal a bit discouraging. Won’t be the last time, so best to learn this lesson early.

I have always liked this lyric  – “There’s no such thing as a failure who keeps trying. Coasting to the bottom is the only disgrace” (Blues Traveler, “Just Wait”). I think that sums it up well.

The Washington Capitals do a lot with youth hockey in our area, both outside of practice and during games. I know many kids who have participated in the “Mites on Ice” event where a mite team gets to go out on the ice during an intermission and play a short game. My son did this once and really enjoyed it. His only comment at that time when asked what it was like to be on the ice in the Verizon Center was that “it was really white.”

This week he was on that ice again during the second intermission of the lockout-delayed home opener. Another event that the Caps hold is a shootout competition, which pits local goalies from different age groups against shooters through two preliminary rounds, with winners competing in the finals during a Caps game. They play it up as a “battle of the states” with the finalists from Maryland competing against the finalists from Virginia. My son was the VA goalie for one of the two Squirt divisions and thus made his second appearance on the Verizon Center ice.

A few observations from the evening:

• The Caps organization does this one up well – there are only 4 kids competing (as opposed to a dozen or more for Mites on Ice) so there is more individual attention. We were personally escorted down to the locker room to drop off his gear and, as the big “surprise” of the night, each child was presented with a Capitals jersey personalized with his name and number. That was a big hit and got a “whoa, that’s cool” out of my boy.
• There is whole little village down at ice level, below the stands, and people are scurrying around all over the place. We walked past the Wizards and Mystics locker rooms, as well as the Capitals and visitors locker rooms. We saw a bunch of Winnipeg Jets (the opposing team for the night) playing soccer in the hallway and passed one or two Caps players warming up. There’s almost a party atmosphere down there.
• My husband noted that when we did see the players, they were smiling and relaxed and having fun. I think that is a good thing – they are playing a game for a living, so they should have fun.
• The actual shootout event is very short and the tiebreaker is not ideal – they flip a coin in the locker room to decide which goalie will defend  for the tiebreaker, if needed. In our case, it was needed and the MD goalie and VA shooter got the nod. One shot – if it goes in, VA wins, and if not, MD wins. The latter happened in our case as the shot went wide. But I understand that they can’t let these things go on forever so it has to end somehow.

Making a save on the last shot.

My son is 10 so, in his mind, he was the top VA goalie in his group and that means that he is the best goalie in VA. We have worked to tone that down a bit considering he didn’t face EVERY goalie in VA and honestly didn’t have to compete against many in the early rounds. What I have stressed to him is this important life lesson: half (or more) of success is showing up. Many kids either couldn’t make it to the early rounds or didn’t know about them or decided that they did not want to participate in a shootout. It is simply not every player or goalie’s favorite thing to do. However, if you do want to do it and you can show up, you might just win. Of course, you have to step up and do your best – that part is up to you. But you may just end up in your own personalized jersey out on the ice in front of thousands of people.

Or, as my son called it, a ten-star night!