The Reluctant Hockey Mom

If you have never been to a girl’s ice hockey tournament, you can thank your lucky stars that your child had enough sense not to pick up a stick and fall in love with a game.

Last week I landed in San Jose with my hockey player for the USA Hockey Girls National Championship along with players from 100 teams representing 22 states and their families. This event is #2 major tourist event for the city attracting an estimated 20,000 visitors who fill 6,000 hotel rooms throughout the Bay Area and spend an estimated 5.3 million dollars. Sounds so exciting doesn’t it? First, let’s do the math – Round trip airfare, rental car and 5 nights in a hotel. A trip to Nationals automatically doubles your hockey budget – costing as much as the entire season that you thought your player had just finished. These girls have played more games than anyone in the NHL this year with a season that began before Labor Day and runs right through Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter school breaks.

Next – the logistics. It is that special time of year when ice hockey overlaps with the lacrosse season. Missing 4 days of lacrosse practice involved multiple documents and signatures, to be excused, but for academics it was a simple call to the nurse for attendance purposes with a cheery, “Just check the assignments on line!” from the faculty. We have flown in from the East Coast arriving @ 8 PM Pacific Time. – By the time we collect our luggage and wait in line for the rental car and get into another line to check into the hotel it is 11:30 – actually 2:30 AM for us and we haven’t eaten since Johnny Rockets at Logan 10 hours ago, but we don’t care. You probably don’t need me to help you imagine what an oasis a hotel filled with teenage girls cannot be. I always feel badly for the poor, unsuspecting hotel guests who have the misfortune to be in town with a tournament. The girls roam the halls in packs staring at their phones and riding up and down in the elevators. They forget their room numbers and lose their key cards. They overcrowd the pool and the hot tub. The hotel morphs into an upscale dorm where you run into people you know from the world of hockey to and from meals. But I digress, we check in and go to bed to get up for the 5:30 AM team meeting before we plug the rink address into the GPS and head to the rink for the 6:40 AM team photo. Still no food, or more importantly, no caffeine. We pay $40 for the privilege of watching our player’s game and line up to wait for the rink canteen to open. Are we having fun yet?

Everything you have heard about hockey parents being rude and obnoxious is true and then some. There is a lot of screaming and lot of yelling. They ring cow bells, they blow air horns. They pound on the glass and stomp their feet. Profanity laced diatribes erupt without warning. They chant and cheer. Some of the more fun ones dress up in team jerseys with wigs and false eyelashes to match their team colors. They are nothing if not passionate about the sport and their players. So far at this tournament we have been spared the usual parental or coach eviction from the rink by the officials, which is always a plus. Besides the players and their coaches and fans, the rinks are also filled with hundreds of volunteer parents from the host team, who man the penalty boxes and the entry ways as well scouts, college coaches, past Hobey Baker award winners, rink owner/operators and, of course, the USA Hockey VIP crew.

Nothing about the spectator sport of ice hockey comes naturally to me. A check is something I want to cash at a bank. Puck is a Shakespearean character. Icing is the frosting on a cake. Creases can be ironed. I never learned how to skate. A city child, some unfortunate caregiver would take me and a friend down to Rockefeller center where we would rent skates, go around the outside of the rink clinging to the boards with bending ankles and have hot chocolate. That’s what I thought an afternoon of ice skating was.

When I got to college I sort of watched hockey for the first time. I would go to games with a bunch of friends and watch a period or two. I had no idea what was going on except for when a goal was scored and the Zamboni made fresh ice. Then I met a hockey player and I imagined I was a character in Love Story. I was Ali McGraw and he was Ryan O’Neal. I thought it was a preppy sport. I married the hockey player and we had girls who grew up skating. We flooded our back yard to make a little rink and my daughters and their Dad would go out and play around. My daughters started playing hockey. We became a hockey family. It was too late before I realized how wrong I had been about everything associated with hockey. It’s loud. It’s cold. It takes up entire weekends. Players get slammed and leave the ice on stretchers. And the yelling….did I mention the yelling? It’s awful.

As a result, I am the slacker mom who tries to watch from inside a warm room – which in San Jose is a bar – trying to stay out of everyone’s way until it is all over. My survival kit includes my iPad filled with reading material and bookmarked to the USA Hockey page for statistics and schedules, – Yes, there is an app for that – My thermos of coffee, although I could wish it was something stronger, my knitting, and my iPod filled with white noise to tune out the background noise of video games that are ever present in the rinks. Of course, like every other child, parent and coach, I also have an iPhone, which is my main communication device with my player – texting – and also acts as my brain with the tournament itinerary and details. I am pretty sure I am not the demographic that Mr. Jobs had in mind as he created these products, but you will want to run out and by Apple Stock after just one hour in a rink when you see so many of these devices in use.

So here are my handy tournament tips. Carry Kleenex and a Handkerchief – as a rink bathroom stocked with paper products is a rare find. Bring Excedrin and Chapstick. Get a room on the first floor of the hotel, so you don’t have to deal with the overcrowded elevators with buttons pushed for every floor – I added this to the list after I was stuck between floors in a hotel elevator at Nationals in Detroit, the year before last. I make my player wait and buy her tournament memorabilia on the last day of the tournament – when the merchandise is discounted as much as 20%. Remember to save space in your bag for the inevitable team photo plaque and CD that will collect dust in a drawer, along with the other 20 or so that we have acquired from other tournaments over the years.

Spring hockey begins next month.

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