Tourney Time
Sunday, February 18th, 2007I love tournament hockey. It’s not for the hardware or the glory: in ten tournament tests, over the course of 4 seasons, my son’s team has brought home exactly one bronze and one silver medal. Many times we were mathematically eliminated before the last game was played, giving us sympathy not for the Devil but the Flyers and a healthy dose of humility.
I love tournament hockey because you experience every range of emotion that you know, compressed into about 60 hours. You have hope, when you arrive at a new hotel from which you have yet to receive a warning about hallway hockey games, and every scoresheet and tote board is as white as pure snow. There’s pure rush, when your team takes the ice for the first game, and well, anything is possible. There’s superstition, heightened when it snows here in Washington, DC, because snow has become something of a good luck omen for your boys. A first-round game in which you fall behind 2-0 surfaces disappointment, only to be chased by excitement as it’s 2-1, and then hoarse, throat-scarring cheering as the game is tied 2-2 with 40 seconds left. A team dinner brings pride, and appreciation, not only for the young men who play but for the parents, siblings and friends who have spent the past six months as my extended family.
Each shot on goal, each change in the game’s pace, modulates the tenor of the weekend and the potential matchups. We tied our first game, putting us in the middle of the pack, and then worked out a win this morning. Being up 3-0, we had our sights set on tonight; when it was 3-1 suddenly our opponents were the ones doing the mental mathematics and thinking through ways to stay in the hunt. A shot, a goal, a big save either way and you start to work the permutations in ways that high school probability teachers never anticipated.
Our goalie was startlingly good today. Three breakaways foiled, and a kick save on a rebound shot that would have had Chico Resch extolling his virtues until at least the next commercial break. Our blueliners stepped in to protect the house; one of our centers who was too sick to play yesterday scored a pretty short-handed goal; and the boys played as a team, on and off the ice. Not bad for a day that started a 5:45 AM. Every emotion includes exhaustion and bewilderment at the lack of easily reached Dunkies outlets near the rinks.
As I write this, a half dozen boys are playing a spirited game of knee hockey in my son’s room, using pillows and furniture for goals and slapping a foam puck around with the same intensity with which they chased the real rubber earlier in the day. They’re having fun, and they’ll remember the knee hockey game and the signs we taped to our doors long after the scores are forgotten.
Four hours from now, we’ll know what President’s Day brings: a medal game or a consolation game in which pride is the reward. Judging from the sounds next door, though, with Pillows having a slight lead over Desk Chair, the best reward has already been claimed.
