I play hockey. (barely, and I’ve only been playing since last October, but that’s neither here nor there). I am playing in my first tournament this month. granted, it’s a very, very recreational level tournament, but for a girl who has only been skating in clinics and a handful of scrimmages and games for the last ten months, it’s still neat. it’s kind of like the first time you made it through the castle at the end of level 1-4 only to find yourself pixelated eye to pixelated eye with bowser himself.. you know damn well that you’re still at the beginning of the game and that your princess is mostly certainly in another castle, but the prospect of reaching that axe on the other side of the bridge is a little exhilarating nonetheless.
so while I’m thinking about how I can avoid making a fool of myself and maintain the stamina to play three full games over two days with a short bench and a team composed of beginners like myself, I thought I’d share with you how I got involved with hockey in the first place. maybe you’ll want to start playing too. or maybe you’ll just figure if I can start playing a sport at 25, you can start learning the drums at 29, or take up photography at 34, or learn another language at 56. you get the idea.
while Pittsburgh is a pretty big hockey town, I grew up in Massachusetts, where hockey is even more popular. I’ve followed hockey since I was a kid: growing up, I watched it on TV and later at my younger brother’s games, where I’d occasionally see a braid peeking out of an opposing team member’s helmet and feel a secret envy that she’d found her way to hockey while I had stubbornly denied my athletic tendencies (despite my father’s encouragment) in favor of Dungeons & Dragons with my sports-shunning friends.
fast forward several years, to summer 2006, I noticed that RMU Island Sports Center offers a Learn to Play Hockey clinic for adult women. the “women” part didn’t mean anything to me; it was the “Learn to Play” and “adult” parts that caught my attention. so I mailed in my registration and spent the rest of the summer getting ready: I scoured used sports stores and my brother’s old hockey bag for equipment that fit and joined the prepubescent free-skate crowd almost weekly in order to dust off whatever ice skating skills I’d hopefully developed during my own free-skate days of yore.
fast forward again, (what a stupid phrase), to the present; where I can now skate backward with relative ease and handle the puck without looking at it (as long as I’m stationary). I’ve figured out how to sit low and go fast (as long as there’s no contact), take wrist shots and slap shots (albeit weak ones), transition smoothly from forward to backward and vice versa (though only in a clockwise direction), and fall without fear (no parenthetical elaboration needed there). I am having more fun playing hockey (with a bunch of women with whom I have almost nothing else in common) than any other new endeavor I’ve pursued in years.
I’ve also sought out and discovered several other clinics in the Pittsburgh area, (including a really fun co-ed adult hockey clinic at the Iceoplex at Southpointe that I’m also taking), and next season I’ll be skating with a team that plays in the Pennsylvania-Ohio Women’s Hockey Association recreational league with hopes of eventually (some day) playing in some co-ed adult D-level leagues around Pittsburgh. if you want any of the information I’ve amassed about local adult hockey clinics, classes, and recreational leagues, just get in touch. and if you’ve been thinking about trying something new, quit thinking about why you shouldn’t or can’t and just give it a try. at least if it sucks or you hate it, you can write about it in your blog.
