The Hawks take flight

During the same period of time that I was going back and forth with the goalie coach dude, a friend of a friend organized ice time at a rink not far from us, which turned out to be quite a nice rink. It had big, spacious locker rooms, and seating for around 3,000 on the main ice surface. As my first exposure to a large rink on smooth indoor ice, it took some getting used to. I felt out of position any time I came out of my net a little- I discovered I'd been using the boards at the rink for visual cues as to my location in relation to the net, and with a larger surface I had to re-calibrate the cues in my brain. This group played a few times, which allowed me to get a little more used to being on skates, and being on a larger rink.


As luck would have it, Goalie Husband's best friend told us about a "beginner's league" at another rink not far from us. He said a friend of his played there. Intrigued, I went to the website and did some digging. Sure enough, they had an "Adult Beginners League", and were at the tail end of their winter season. Giddy with excitement, I emailed the contact on the site and asked about the details. Within the next day GoalieHusband and I were signed up for the spring season, and passed the word on to two other people we played with. Through word of mouth, a few of the other people at the outdoor rink heard about it and decided to join as well. Unbeknownst to me, when they signed up, they requested to be on our team. The director of the league started calling us "Team Smith". (No, Smith is not really our last name. Come on, this is the Internet.)


As I intimated a few posts ago, I was growing dissatisfied with the women's indoor roller league. Our season there ended just before the ice season was about to begin, and that gave me a way to not sign up for the following season without ruffling any feathers. One of the other people I'd spoken to about the beginner's ice league was a girl I'd become friendly with in the women's league- she was on the same wavelength as me in terms of the vibe in the group. She'd started playing with me and the rest of "the guys" at the outdoor rink, and was interested in trying ice as well, so she signed up with the rest of us. I think it would have happened anyway, but the women's league ended up disbanding without the two of us... numbers had been getting lower and lower each week and I think that was the final blow. I feel somewhat badly about that, but I'm sure it would have happened anyway.

Fortunately, the director chose the path of good taste and didn't name us "Team Smith" after all. Our group constituted about 8 people, and with about another 8 we formed a team that was named the "Hawks". Our inaugural season was a Cinderella story. From the first game, where we got blown out 8-3 (I was sick and couldn't play, so at least that one wasn't on my personal record!), the team gradually gelled and improved each week until by the end of the season not only were we not getting blown out, we were actually winning games! The icing (ha ha!) on the cake was coming into the playoffs as the 6th-seeded team (out of 8) and ultimately beating the 2nd-place team for the "bronze". We stood around in the parking lot for about two hours, drinking beer and grinning ear to ear, and planning for the next season. All of our members except one signed up for the summer season... and he pledged to be back in the fall. Happy to be able to remain together as a team, we headed into the summer season with an eye on continuing to improve.