Mercy me! My first league game(s)

After playing with the women's group for only a few months, an opportunity arose for me to substitute for their regular goalie in their league game. Several of the gals (and a handful of guys) had a team in the rink's beginner level league. Let's call them the Clippers. One evening, Maria asked me if I was available to play in their Clippers game the next night, since the regular goalie couldn't do it. I accepted right away, not without nervous apprehension. I'd never played in a league before.

When I arrived at the rink the next night, I was in the restroom changing at the same time as another Clippers member, who I found to be quite candid to a newcomer about what turned out to be some internal problems. I mentioned that I was nervous, and she said not to worry, that I couldn't do any worse than their goalie had done in the last game. I asked what the score had been; she said 8-0. Ouch. Surely I could do better than that, I thought. Apparently the score wasn't the only problem. Evidently this goalie had taken her frustrations out on her teammates, which I came to understand was a regular occurrence.

By the time the game started I had forgotten all the locker room drama and was focused and ready to go. Right off the bat, I could tell I was in for a lot of work. The play was in our zone the entire time. Literally. The entire time. I made a lot of saves, sometimes second and third saves, but the goals just piled up. It's hard to defend against a forward line that camps out in front of you, completely unchallenged. By the middle of the second period, the score was 8-0 and the game was called for "mercy". Both teams wanted to keep playing though - why not, we had the time- so I agreed to stay out there and go until our time was up. I wasn't thrilled with the result, but at least it wasn't the first time (or the last) that it would happen to this team. In the locker room several people even commented that it was a much more pleasant "mercy kill" than the last one. I just kept my mouth shut. I wasn't there to compete with the other goalie or fuel any fires.

Some time after that, at our regular women's game, I ended up talking to the other goalie about it, purely by accident. She confided in me that she wasn't going to play with the team in the next season, because it was the same result all the time, and it was really having an effect on her confidence. I was glad to know it wasn't just me.

Unfortunately, I filled in for her one more time, and once again, I did all I could but we ended up "mercied" again. This time I was not so relaxed about it. It really got under my skin, actually. From the time of that first league game until the time I played my last game with the women several weeks later, my confidence took a huge nosedive. It took a little while- and another encounter with ice- before I was back to my old self again.