Skating

It’s been over a year since I last skated. For the most part, I don’t miss it.

I have a vague memory of my parents taking me to an ice rink as a little kid, to sign me up for pee wee hockey. Hazily, I recall leaving not long after arriving, without my parents signing me up.

If I were a betting man, I’d say this had something to do with my mother. She may have balked at the eye-watering price of hockey equipment, which, even then, would have issued a pounding to our monthly budget. Perhaps she caught wind of the practice schedule, which ikely have involved ferrying me to and from the ice rinks of Worcester County in those frosty pre-dawn hours when all sane and sober people are still sleeping. Or maybe she saw some tiny tot get blasted into the boards. I just don’t know.

Somewhere in a parallel universe, they signed me up for hockey and by age ten, young Joe became a fluid and confident skater, negotiating backwards crossovers and deft puck handling maneuvers with jaw-dropping dexterity. Perhaps that Joe went on to play high school hockey and later college. His post-college years would be dotted with beer leagues and travel tournaments with his buddies and today he’d be playing in some chill, late night league, trading paint with young bucks and relying on shifty passing and a smooth, reliable slapshot to keep his point total in the respectable region.

However, in this universe, Joe never received any formal instruction on the ice. No, this Joe began skating sometime around age ten or twelve. My mother scored a pair of used skates for me — probably from a yard sale — and sent me down to Coes Pond to skate with the McDonough brothers who, living on said pond, had years of ice skating experience under their young belts.

The skates then were nothing like the sturdy boots we now wear; back then, hockey skates featured stiff leather boots that offered zero ankle support — you just had to figure it out. I was a mess. With nobody to show me the ropes, I valiantly tried to keep up with my friends, watching them effortlessly glide across the frozen pond while I leaned on my stick, pushing around the bumpy lake ice and, between regular wipe outs, praying for the game to end.

I gave hockey another go in college, when I joined my rugby teammates on a team in the school’s intramural league — the lesser of the two divisions. Really it was an excuse to drink beer and again, as a purely student-run endeavor, there was zero coaching or development. Nonetheless, over the course of a couple of years, I developed into a barely-competent player. I scored a few goals, which elated my teammates. Weirdly, while my sporting life had centered around baseball and rugby, the very last time that my mother saw me compete in any sort of sport was my junior year in college, when our team played in the intramural championship game. We lost and when the season ended the next year — after we again lost the championship (a game which ended in a glorious brawl, initiated entirely by our team) — I traded my hockey equipment for a couple of rugby shirts and cleats.

Eventually, a few years back, I gave it another go. I’d dislocated my ankle in a softball game some years after college and the idea of skating on that same ankle scared the ever-loving shit out of me. But, spurred on by some friends who joined one of San Diego’s myriad Adult Learn-to-Play league, I invested in some tight new skates and a new set of equipment and once again, I was off and running.

Again, I found myself sharing the ice with guys who had largely grew up playing or who, having picked up hockey as adults, played several nights a week. And so, once again, I had to figure it out in real time, setting my ego aside each night as I tried to keep up with players who were much faster and intuitive than I.

The learning curve proved fairly quick and within a year, I was playing in leagues around the city. Unsurprisingly, the more I played, the more I evolved. Finally I landed a prime skate — a private, invite-only deal on Saturday nights. We had guys who had played their whole lives — a couple who played in college and beyond — as well as people like me, who weren’t going to scare off any goalies but who knew how to slot into a line and, more importantly, how to get along with the group.

Each week, you donned either a dark shirt or a light shirt — whichever you brought with you — and that’s how the teams were determined. There were Russians, Canadians, Ukrainians and a whole bunch of Californians. We had cops, longshoremen, military dudes, accountants, painters, federal agents and greenskeepers. Everybody largely kept each other in the game and things never got too chippy, with the exception of one dude who treated every pass as if an NHL contract was in the balance.

The problem was the ice time — Saturday evening at 11:30 pm - 1:30 am. Absolutely nuts. For three years, on every Saturday evening, I’d get off my couch at 10:30 pm and drive across the county to the rink, where I’d suit up and hit the ice at 11:30. We’d warm up for about 10-15 minutes and then get started. We would not leave the ice until 1:30 am on the nose.

It takes a certain mindset to agree to playing pickup hockey at such an abysmal time slot, week after week — the mindset of an insane person. But I hung in there because it was fun as hell, the people were pretty wonderful (except for the one dude mentioned above) and the workout was phenomenal. Eventually, the thrill of late night hockey waned for some and over the final year of my playing, the games were regularly 7 on 7. This meant that you’d have two people on the bench with five guys on the ice. If you needed a rest, too bad, because as soon as you came off the ice and your ass hit the bench, there was some dude coming off the ice behind you and off you went, back into the action. Inevitably, one of the highlights of each game was when the skate organizer would yell “Next goal wins!” as the clock hit 1:30.

In a professional hockey game, skaters routinely take 30-40 second shifts. Those get a little longer as you drop down into recreational leagues, where guys regularly take 3 minute shifts. In our little pickup game, shifts were 7-10 minutes each. Sometimes longer. When the game finished, I’d pile my battered frame into my truck and drive home, still wired from the bright lights, cool air and adrenaline pump of the two hour workout. I’d hang my wet gear up to dry in my garage, grab some food, let the dogs out, shower and hopefully be in bed by 3 am.

The next day was painful. Going for a run was out of the question. Generally, anything other than sitting on the couch was out of the question.

I needed a break and so I took a couple of weeks off and rediscovered the sublime joy of a Sunday morning run after a full night’s sleep. I missed the hell out of the hockey gang but physically and mentally, I felt much better.

In November, 2023, I cleaned my equipment, packed it into my bag and pushed it into closet. I haven’t pulled it out since. The guys check in every once in awhile, reminding me that I have an open invite to come back whenever I’d like. Maybe someday I will. I certainly think about it. But tonight, watching the NFL playoffs on the couch, with a chill Sunday run as my only plan tomorrow, I’m pretty happy in retirement.