Maybe Getting Too Into It?

It goes without saying that we have become the nutty hockey family, but is it possible that we’re getting a little too into it? As my friend JB said, we drank the hockey Kool-Aid, and now we’re asking for seconds. As you may already know, we are thoroughly engrossed in being hockey parents, with two kids as players and a dad who’s a weekend warrior, not to mention a loving mom who is very supportive.

Well if that wasn’t enough, we help out at the arena on a regular basis. The rink has some crazy arrangement with the high school and town. I originally thought it was just a part of the high school since it sits on the school grounds, but it’s actually an independent entity, and everyone has to pay to use it, even the school. Since we’re youth hockey, we, too are responsible for paying our dues, and part of that is fundraising. This includes all the usual bake sale type of stuff, and we regularly make chili and cookies to support the program.

We’ve also been working the scoreboard, and let me tell you, it is not for the faint of heart. We’re lucky because they don’t keep score for the mites games and the house squirts don’t play real league games. Once you get into travel squirts and up, you have to be serious and keep track of every detail of the game. We’re talking players stats, shots on goal, penalties, etc. There is an official score sheet with tons of details that get submitted to some governing body, and both teams get a copy. The score is the easy part. What complicates the matter is that the computer that controls the scoreboard is a bit complicated, and there’s no reset switch. Best of all, when you screw up and it’s obvious you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s up there on the scoreboard for everyone to see. Talk about embarrassing.

As I mentioned, doing the mites is easy. You just buzz each line change, and that’s about it. There are no stoppages, and they don’t keep score and don’t call penalties. For the house squirts, things get a little more interesting. They do stop play, which means every time the whistle blows, we have to stop the clock and if we’re on the ball, play some music. The whistle blows for offsides, icing, penalties, goals, and whenever the goalie stops the puck, so we have our work cut out for us. We then have to stop the music the moment the puck is dropped and resume the clock. The scoreboard also has shots on goal as well as penalties.

The penalties are what kill us, because we couldn’t figure out how to program it. Once you input the number, there’s no turning back, and the first time we did it, I put in the wrong number and couldn’t erase it. People kept looking up at the scoreboard wondering what sort of loser was in the scoring booth. As the penalty minutes wind down, the player in the box has some sense of when he gets to exit, just like in the NHL, but since we don’t know what we’re doing, we have to lean over the glass and tell them their time is up.

Now all of this is challenging in and of itself, but we’re “supposed” to have an official game sheet that lists all the players and the game stats. A copy gets filed away with USA Hockey and each coach gets a copy. Since we’re a house team, nobody really cares, but one time the coach asked for his copy and I looked at him like he was insane. He laughed and didn’t really care, but I felt sort of bad. Sort of.

Being in the score booth can be pretty stressful. It really takes a team of people because you have to watch the game closely and be on top of the information. Life would be simpler if there were no music in between stoppage of play, but the music adds to the festive atmosphere. Since R and I can’t leave well enough alone, we even burned special CDs to play during the games, using songs that we thought we be good for a hockey game. This, of course, adds another layer of complication to the whole endeavor.

There are two ways to play music during the game. There is a CD player hooked up the sound system, as well as a laptop computer filled with songs. The computer is nice because there are millions of songs, and all you have to do is double click and the song plays. The downside is that they are short clips, really just designed to be played between whistles. Since the time between whistles varies, the song clips will often end and the next one will kick in, which is kind of lame. Also, you have to click on the songs, and it’s not always clear what the song title is. Since we’re pressed for time as well and scrambling, we often end up hitting the same darn song over and over.

The way we started to do it was to use the CD player, which has a carousel, but again, the CDs don’t have all the songs listed, so I’ve put discs in that play all sorts of angry rap music. That’s why we burned our own. The other disadvantage of CDs is that you can’t put as many songs as the computer, so we have to burn more of them. Plus, the CD player is more cumbersome than using the computer.

Either way, we can’t spend too much time trying to figure this thing out, so we just play a CD until the game starts, then hit pause. When the next stoppage of play occurs, we skip to the next song and then stop it when the game resumes, and so on and so forth.

My point is, we could do the bare minimum and just work the clock, but it’s nice having music. DF even has discs that play official NHL songs, and it’s difficult to not be influenced by his enthusiasm. The guy is amazing, he really loves hockey.

Okay, enough of my rambling. Suffice it to say that we’re making our lives busier and more complicated, but loving every minute of it.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Wendi Pilling and dchorneyko for the pics.