When No Words Are Enough
We concluded our annual President’s Day tournament in Washington, DC yesterday evening by playing in the championship game. Tournament hockey has its own strange little cadence; you spend all day thinking about your final round-robin game to determine the medal games, only to see that it’s been made immaterial by the divisional game before yours. In our case, a team that could have tied with us for 2nd place instead tied our other division opponent, putting us in the enviable position of having clinched no worse than the 2nd seed — and the championship game — before our own final game even started.
That was the good news. The bad news is that the fourth team in our bracket was probably playing a level lower than they should have been, not through misrepresentation but through demographics and varying interpretations of USA Hockey Tier II levels. Our final round-robin game was only round in our end, where we lost 10-2 (although the 2 goals scored were 2 of only 3 that this team gave up the entire tournament).
Gold and silver went to the winner and loser of the rematch, yesterday afternoon. At the end of the first period, we were losing 1-0 (versus a 5-2 ditch at the similar point the night before). Our coach told the boys, “I have nothing to say; that’s the best hockey you’ve played all year.” And he wasn’t humoring them or distracting them from what they knew would be the hardest game of the season; he was being honest.
We lost, 4-0, but collected medals and a banner and took lots of pictures. I let one of the younger siblings carry the banner through the rink lobby, and he was all smiles. All of the boys left the locker with hardware around their necks (nice touch this year, with medals replacing individual plaques, since the plaques were hard to wear), and I’ll bet they kept their medals on through rest stops, naps in the car, and 250 miles of highway home.
We have four games and one tournament left; our annual pilgrimage north to Lake Placid. Our team believes they can skate with anyone. Yesterday’s scoreboard showed a loss, but that was only in the statistical counting of the game. The emotional, the physical, and the leadership sheet shows a huge win for which no words were enough.