It’s funny how your children open your eyes to new experiences
and how that all works out can be somewhat mysterious.
It’s funny how your children open your eyes to new experiences and how that all works out can be somewhat mysterious.
Eight years ago, daughter Cayla, then a sophomore in high school, came home and said she wanted to try out for field hockey. Dad had no clue. I coached her in Gilroy Little League for a couple of years, worked with her on the pitcher’s mound when all the other girls were resolutely afraid to take the mound, and carted her around to youth soccer games galore. Field hockey? What’s that?
Well, she loved it – a hybrid sport in a sense of soccer and baseball. Like baseball, you have a stick and you hit the ball and, like soccer, you run up and down the field. She was good at it – good enough to play NCAA Division II in college and also, more importantly, inspire her younger sister to grab a stick and play, too.
Somehow the stick and the ball quickly transitioned to a stick and a puck on a professional level, field hockey fun easily translated into NHL hockey fan. And we’ve been all-in Sharks fans ever since.
It certainly wasn’t something I grew up with. In my Irish Catholic clan, football ruled the day – Notre Dame football in particular – which captivated my Uncle Jim and my father every season. Baseball came in a close second with basketball and the more solitary tennis mixed in. Notre Dame football on any given Saturday ruled the airwaves, radio and TV, though, and New Year’s Bowl Game Day was all about turkey sandwiches – butter the bread, add turkey, use the pepper shaker generously, pop under the broiler, flip and enjoy with football TV games.
That’s what we’d do at home and at Gramps and Nana’s house where you could absolutely count on two things: the fire in the hearth and the football game on the TV. Over turkey sandwiches and sports, we bonded. I loved listening to Uncle Jim, my grandfather, Dad and whoever else gathered randomly in the den comment, cheer, yell and yak about the game.
We were on common turf in the cozy den and I learned from a young age about strategy, character, criticism and competition. There were sharp minds and wits in the room and sometimes sharp tongues. To this day, I believe those sports fan “den sessions” helped me along in my writing career … though if Notre Dame ended up losing that year’s football game to devil incarnate rival USC, a fair portion of that dialogue could never make its way onto a printed page.
Often in life, it’s not the momentous events or the deep discussions that end up having the most impact, rather it’s the smaller accumulation of week-to-week or year-to-year happenings that make the real difference.
Which brings me back to why I’ve become a “huge” ice hockey fan even though the closest thing I’ve ever done that has anything to do with playing the sport is skating round and round the Olympic ice arena in Squaw Valley during a few summers in my youth.
When it comes to professional ice hockey, there’s plenty to marvel at. Stamina, stick handling, speed bursts, grit, hand-eye coordination, skating skills … the list could get a lot longer quickly. But the real “miracle on ice” for me is the bonus communication time it provides between my daughters and me.
It’s that phone call from Mariah who’s at Oregon State in Corvallis after the Sharks made the amazing comeback Tuesday night … “That was A-Mazing Dad … can you believe it … my friends found a way for me to watch it live on my computer. I had some studying to do, so I watched in the library while I worked …”
An overtime comeback victory following a 4-0 deficit in the first period to the LA Kings in the Stanley Cup playoffs is cause to set aside inquiries about studying while watching an intense hockey game.
But the game conversation – the emotional fan bond that we share – leaves the net open, so to speak, for chat about school, her friends, tests, money, last weekend, the Oregon weather and anything else that might be on either of our minds. Sharing that common ice gives us time and space to cement the bond.
Off the phone with one, only to find a text message from Cayla who’s now in nursing school in Nashville, TN. She stayed up to watch the whole Sharks game. “Yikes” I think, “it’s past 1 a.m there.” But again, it’s the playoffs, she’s in college thousands of miles away and we are sending messages back and forth. Pass on the “it’s late, Cakes” reminder.
She’s a Nashville Predators fan now, too, having met some of the players through a new friend. A Sharks-Predators Cup series would tug at her heart’s loyalty strings some. She’s taken to Nashville like a star race horse takes to Churchill Downs. But even that recent development provides easy-going fodder for father-daughter conversations. A few weeks ago, we visited her and took in a Preds game. Now we know the quirks of Bridgestone Arena, where she’s going with whom and even the players she knows.
“At the Preds game :),” she texted the other night and we “chatted” back and forth. It’s comforting to know her surroundings. I can picture it now, just like I can picture the room in the house she’s renting with two other girls. Three months into her latest cross-country sojourn she’s having fun and doing well.
The hockey talk helps when there’s a looming conversation. It’s not like, “How about Joe Pavelski’s goal last night and, by the way, how much does that summer job you’re getting pay?” The former conversation just takes the pressure off the latter regardless.
There are other reasons to like hockey – the players are, to a large degree, articulate, accessible and appreciative of the fans. But I’ll stick with the family theme. After all, toddler Sharks shirts are a good gift for grandson Jackson and, who knows, maybe he’ll play junior Sharks hockey one day and I can cheer him on from the stands. Until then, I’ll enjoy the texts, the conversations, the family memories and our common hockey bond. All this from a young girl’s notion to try out for field hockey. That’s pretty darn cool.
