another season gone

the hockey scene this weekend was surprisingly boring, especially considering that all seven games were championships for the seven respective leagues. we've got the ten-year-olds, the twelve-year-olds, the fourteen-year-olds, the high schoolers, the old men, the old ladies, and finally, the adults. the only game that was close enough to be exciting was the under-ten game, which started twenty-five minutes late because of some mom trying to take team pictures. one thing you've got to understand about under-ten-year-olds is that hardly any of them can put on their gear. so before every game you hear an endless chorus of, "coach, can you tie this?" "mom, can you help me?" "coach, where's my other glove?"

so of course, once all the kids are finally dressed, camera mom lines them up and tells all twenty of them to take off their helmets so she can see their faces in the picture. "coach, can you help me?"

once the picture is snapped, all twenty helmets have to go back on. "coach, can you help me?"

the whole time i was sitting in the stat box pulling out my hair. the first game being late pushes back all the rest of the games for the entire day. freakin little kids.

anyway, my twelve-year-old buddy josh was playing goalie for the little kids, and sunshine, sparky and i made fun of him the whole time. the game ended in a 4-4 tie, meaning there was five minutes of sudden death. no one scored. then, as if the next game wasn't late enough, the refs declared a shoot-out, with josh playing goalie for both teams. josh was terrified and did really well, which is great for him but it meant the game never ended. about eighteen kids had already taken penalty shots and josh wasn't budging. i yelled at him to just let one in.

the first person to finally score on josh was none other than his angelic, blond-haired little sister, sarah. and she stuffed him. her very feminine "hooray!" after she scored probably only drove the insult home for josh, whose entire family was in the stands, mocking him. that was the highlight of the day for me, especially since it meant the first game was finally over.

like i said, the next five games weren't close enough to be exciting. saturday was the windiest day we've had all season, and to top it off the scoreboard was broken all day, meaning i was working with a stopwatch and a flip board. boring, boring, boring. no one even scored for me, even though sunshine ian got about ten goals. what a brat.

finally it was time for the adult game. my team consisted of myself, collin, clifton, rick, teague (thank GOD), and bean, our prodigal teammate. i was kinda bugged that he showed up after not playing all season.... but he's really good, so i didn't say anything. we played against my old friend kevin, peanut, leo, roger the tough guy, and javier was in net.

the game went well. they won, because they're a better team and i think they played harder. the score was 8-5, i think. it's true that teague let in a few sloppy goals, but i think the right team won.

more important than who won, at least to me, is that collin and i finally killed a penalty. all season long we have been the penalty-killing team, and every time we kill all but about ten seconds and then the other team scores. it's so depressing. but not this time! i think rick was the one who was called, and collin and i went out and told each other, "this is The One." collin worked so hard! he really is my hero. i feel like i finally proved i'm a worthy defenseman after that, especially since i played good defense in the rest of the game also. i stuffed peanut and roger a few times, and roger even congratulated me! funny.

after the puny awards ceremony, ray and the hugos and i went for soup, pizza, and beer at bountiful, where the three of them talked about ice hockey and tried to hook me up with the shady waiter. another season gone.