Suck and Suck .... er, I mean, Stick and Puck

I thought I was past the point in my life where teenage boys had the ability to crush my soul, but I learned better yesterday when I went to an afternoon stick and puck with Scott TCG.


It was the stuff of goalie nightmares, frankly. The kind of "game" I expected to have my first time out, but didn't because novice league is kind, gentle, and wonderful like that. Whereas stick and puck is a soulless feeding frenzy.

Basically, the big people split from the little kids and each took one end of the ice to play half ice. Each team had to clear the zone for a possession change but they both shot on the same net, so I essentially played goal for both teams. Which just meant that I hated all of them, non-stop, in an alternating fashion.

There's very little joy to be found in a situation like this. I let in probably 30 goals and stopped maybe 4. MAYBE. There was a point where I didn't know and didn't care whether I made a save. My legs were limp, my feet were screaming, I was skating on my ankles, I was spent. When I got to that point, I was just ready to be done. When I was learning to skate, I always found there wasn't a whole lot to be gained from continuing to practice after your form falls apart and your legs are shot.

If someone had shown up with a gun and said, "Tend goal or die" about 45 minutes into this thing, I would have thanked them profusely and told them to hurry up and pull the fucking trigger. It was tough, and probably too much too soon for my strength and skill level, but I got out there and did it, and that counts for a lot.

That said, there were some bright points.

• Scott is a relentless but supportive "pusher" and didn't whack me with his stick like I'm sure he wanted to as I sat on the ice like a petulant brat refusing to get back in the net or do shuffles or whatever the hell he wanted me to do.
  
  The benefit to him is that after being reminded of the hell of being a newbie goalie, he must have felt like an old pro, and went on to earn himself his second ever shut out in the first game of the Oil Kings Holiday Shootout. Woo! Go Scotty!
  
  And seriously, man, thank you. Even in the heat of the moment when I was miserable, I was just damn grateful you were there. I would have told myself to go stuff it if I'd been in your skates. Now you know why I paid for your ice time. :)
  
• I left it all out there. It may not have looked like much of an effort, but I haven't been that spent in a really long time. I don't think I was that tired after walking for 7.5 hours in the Portland Marathon. But at least I didn't have any godforsaken blisters! I still don't miss that shit.
  
• Mentally, until The Dumb settled into my brain, I knew what I *should* be doing. It just really really didn't look like it because I just couldn't get my body to do it. In fact, some shots, I actually had time to think, "Oh, I should go down here" but the exhausted side of me said, "Oh hell no! You'll just have to get up again!" That exhausted side was talking LOUDLY to me, because once you've let in 20 goals for two teams you don't give a shit about, it's tough to find the giveadamn.
  
• I was playing too deep in my net, which Scott hammered at me enough that if nothing else stuck, hopefully that did.
  
• It was awfully nice to see Coach Stalin and her family waiting off-ice when we finished. After having wave after relentless wave of very unfriendly faces coming at me for so long, that was a wonderful relief to see a gaggle of friendly ones.
• I still want to play goal. I came home and Mr. C made some sympathetic noises at me and said, "Uh oh, you don't like playing goal?" Not the case at all. I knew it was going to be a tough road and there'd be days like this. Lots of them. But it's still better than playing out and it's still what I want to do. It's still just the most epic position in all of sports and totally worth this craziness.
  
• One needs days like this to remind oneself that one needs to not just sit on the couch and watch hockey between game days. Got that, One? (Got it.)

Meanwhile, now it's 4:30 a.m. and I'm sore and sleepy and couldn't get back to sleep after waking up at 2:30 or so. But I totally believe chocolate milk cures stuff like that, so that and the Aeros game from last night are next on the agenda.

OH! And one last note: Sugar Land Ice... You people seriously need to consider giving goalies a discount at stick and pucks. Even on a busy day with probably 40 people skating, there were only two goalies. It's not going to break the bank to offer that perk.