Flashback Friday: Hockey days

Welcome to my first instalment of Flashback Friday (totally stole this fab idea off other bloggers btw, I’m not THAT creative on my own). Today, I will be reminiscing with all of you about my hockey days, that’s right I played hockey—ice hockey to be exact, for six years! For five of those six years I was a goalie. Yup, that’s the player that stands in front of the puck. Crazy, I know. I definitely had my share of bumps and bruises back in the day.

When I was young, the idea of girl’s hockey was pretty new. A few girls in my class played on boy’s teams because there were no girl’s teams at the time. Wow, I sound old writing this, I’m really not that old. When I was 13, I started playing hockey on the girl’s team in Fort St. John and on the boy’s team out at Clearview (small country school that I attended K-10 at). I was terrible. I could hardly skate forwards let alone backwards and shooting the puck was out of the question, let alone hitting the net.

Fast forward to the following season, I had so much fun playing with the boy’s that I decided to play on just the boy’s team this year. This brilliant idea led to me becoming the goaltender since no one else was up for the job. Girl hockey players were few and far between but girl goalies were unheard of! There I am in the background guarding my net!!

Fast-forward two years, Grade 11, I like to think of this as my peak year. Once again, I practiced with the Clearview boy’s team, which ultimately led to mine and Eric’s relationship but that’s another story for another time, and I played competitively on the girl’s team. I probably spent upwards of 15 hours a week on the ice and we were travelling every weekend. In the spring, ‘Team North’ chose me as one of two goalies to go to Salmon Arm and compete with other girls from northern B.C. against six other all-female teams chosen from across the province. This was when I played at the most competitive level and I loved it, I wanted to go to college on a hockey scholarship, or at least continue playing hockey at the college level.

In the summer, I would often attend one or two hockey camps for a week at a time. In the span of a week, you’d spend about 40 hours on the ice at these camps. It was brutal, I remember my whole body aching every single night, I dreamt about pucks. I guess that was there point..

In Grade 12 and my first year of college hockey was moved to the back-burner. I didn’t go away to school on a scholarship, like I’d hoped and hockey became more of a chore than something I wanted to do. Ironically enough, that was also the year that the FSJ girls team did the best and competed the most competitively, there we are, I’m on the far left with the big red pads on! Maybe that’s what happens when you devote so much of your life to something for so many years, or maybe I was never truly devoted to it in the first place, who knows.

Here’s what I do know about my experiences with hockey:

-There’s nothing like being on a team. When you spend that much time with people, especially if you’re going on long road trips on a crowded bus you make the best of friends and the worst of enemies. Try spending anywhere from five to 12 hours on a bus with 21 other girls? Fights are bound to break out. But some of the most hilarious, most fun moments I’ve ever had have happened when I was on hockey road trips.

-Playing hockey is when I started to get serious about exercising; I needed to be in good shape so I would do dry-land training at the gym on days when I didn’t have hockey practice. Before I started playing hockey, I was a chubby, inactive little girl. I don’t know if I would be as passionate about exercise today if it wasn’t for all those years playing hockey.

-Still another story for another time, but I know that if it wasn’t for hockey I would not be where I am today, not only in reference to Eric but in reference to so many other things in my life too. When you play a team sport where your expected to be somewhere at a certain time and people are depending on you, you learn about discipline and accountability, especially when you have six a.m. practices BEFORE school. You also learn about working with other people and being a team player. Being a team player, discipline and accountability are all important life skills that I’ve carried into other parts of my life.

-It was a really great way for me to bond with my dad. He was always very actively involved with my hockey team, drove me to every single practice and NEVER missed a game. He also coached or helped coach my team almost every year! When I look back on it now I realize that we spent the most time together bonding over hockey and I’m really grateful for that!

I think about hockey from time to time, I try to remember what it felt like to play and sometimes it makes me sad that I can’t remember the exact feeling of doing the butterfly or making a big glove save. I don’t miss hockey, though. It’s just not part of my life anymore. It’s like an ex-boyfriend or friend, you think about them every so often, but you don’t really miss them. Hockey was a BIG part of my life for many years and now it’s just another piece of my life that has happened and has helped make me who I am today!

But it’s still the BEST sport on earth!

Your turn! Tell me about a team sport you used to play or still do play? Has it shaped your life the way hockey’s shaped mine? Tell me about it? And, if you feel up to it, post a ‘flashback Friday’ on your blog! Happy Friday

PS: I am SO thrilled there have been so many comments on the last few blogs! Whoo, thanks guys! Let’s keep it up on this one shall we!