Not a sports chick

I’ve never been into America’s Past Time (baseball) or the wife-beater’s fave of football. I enjoyed playing, briefly, basketball in school and have found that I like watching it too.

But my first love is HOCKEY sports-wise.

Now I did a stint in journalism school at the university covering hockey. The team wasn’t an official campus team but rather a club. They had a lot of heart, played their guts out against the likes of Stanford’s well-funded team while paying for their own equipment, transportation and practices.

I fell in love the first game. The cold of the interior air. The smell of the rink and the thrill of watching and hearing those players skate by at 50-miles an hour sealed the deal.

Okay, I didn’t like it if I was in agony from feminine health issues since the cold of the bench reached directly into my bones. Often I would soothe the physical discomfort with a hot chocolate so I could devote the intellectual to the game.

The hot cocoa and a big fluffy chocolate-brown feaux fur jacket became part of the hockey ritual.

AND… the best part???
Interviewing the hot, sweaty and scantily clad players in the locker room after the game!!! Alright, so I never made it further than a couple of feet through that door, but not for lack of invitation. The guys didn’t care. I just couldn’t bring myself to be THAT kind of reporter. Not then at least!

How do you go from knowing nothing about hockey to being able to write about a game with some kind of authority? Crash course, let me tell you.

My then-editor gave me several stories written by the more experienced sports reporter and said to pay attention.

Well, that was good for the writing end of the issue. But how do I know what to write if I know nothing about the game? How can I pick out what is important and how much of it do I need to keep close track of besides the score?

“Hockey for Dummies.” I am the first to admit that I am not above the Dummies books. (I’ve even given “Sex for Dummies” as a semi-gag bridal shower gift. It went over VERY well and I highly recommend that!)
After reading that book, getting some of the lingo down and the other stories in my notebook, I went to the rink.

My fear quickly melted despite the freezing temperatures. It was an alternate universe, a club where I belonged because it was my job to make sure anybody who wasn’t there would read about it and feel like they were.

The crowning moment was when I timidly tracked down the players to find out their thoughts on the game. I had all kinds of preconceived notions about what kind of cocky jerks they must be. They just skated their asses off, nothing that my fat butt could ever hope to do… they must be stuck up and mean.

Was I wrong! Boy. Nice, accommodating - and I mean that: here they were overheated, wanting to shower, it’s late on a school night - I was blown away.

That’s something I came to truly cherish about those games. I got to know the players a little better than the average “fan” and so their losses were my losses and their wins were my wins. And it was mine alone. I didn’t have a friend go with me, no one at my side to share. Mine all mine!

Oh, how I miss those evenings.

Maybe I’ll make some hot cocoa and turn the AC way down.