It was a hockey weekend here at the LightHouse. This was an appropriate end to a hockey week. With the schools out for so much of the week, LightGirl spent an inordinate amount of time at the rink sparring and playing on the ice with her friends. When the kids are out of school, the rink opens up the ice (for a small charge of course) to club members. The kids flock there like lemmings. Don’t mistake me, though, I’d far rather she be there than at the mall or the movie theater.
Friday night she attended something called “Club Sk8”. This is a free skate event for the whole community … well … all teenagers. It was the most teens I’d seen in one place at one time in quite some time. I felt as though I’d stepped into the bar scene of the first (third) Star Wars movie. A brief warning flashed through my mind that I would never ever allow LightGirl to attend one of these events again. But then individual faces began to settle out of the mix and I saw the youth underneath the gloss. She had fun and kept to her friends. She was fine. More fine than I.
Saturday her team played a so-called developmental team one age bracket up. So these 13 and 14 year olds went up against 17-19 year olds. They lost 4-3. But they played hard and fair. Which is more than I can say for the other team; which, despite having more than 3 lines of players, kept their best players on the ice for the entire 3rd period in order to win, while our coach rotated her players according the ethics of the league. Of course, when I say these players were on the ice for the third period that’s something of a misnomer … they were on the ice when they weren’t in the penalty box. This was the dirtiest team I think we’ve ever played. AND … I found out after the game the players complained to the off ice officials that us moms were distracting them with our cheers. That was a first. What a silly game.
Sunday we played against the boys PeeWee Select in-house team. Select means that these boys are hand picked. Our team is come one, come all. They are 11-13 years olds. As the game went on a cheering contest of sorts evolved between the parents. It was good natured, of course, because we all knew that we were part of the same organization. There were cracks made from us about the girls not hurting the boys. There were cracks from them about the boys trying harder to get dates than to win the game. It was fun and funny. The boys won, but they had to work hard to do it. They had to work a lot harder than they expected to. That was funny too. Our girls knocked them all over the ice. Stole the puck out from under their sticks. And raced them from one end of the rink to the other. One of our defensewomen was skating like she was a pro. She was whipping up and down the ice frontwards and back, making it look easy.
While the moms awaited the players, one of the more boisterous of the boys dads came up to us and said, “Hey, I’m the dad of the boys goalie. Your goalie is really good. She’s really good.” He nodded his head and grinned. We all grinned too, because we think DB is fantastic (and she is). Then he said, “You know, she’s so good, she oughta just forget about girls hockey and come on over to the boys.” and he turned around and left, patting himself on the back for what a nice compliment he’d just given us. Nice.
After the game, some of our girls (LightGirl included), went to the boys lockerroom. They poked their heads in and called out, “We’re sorry if we hurt any of you.” and ran away giggling. They’re still laughing about that story. It was all in fun and very good natured. There was free ice time after the game. And, yes, we stayed so that LightGirl could skate some more.
She’s skating again today for about 7 straight hours.
We’re back to real life tomorrow. But it’s been fun.
