The Summer of My Discontent

Posts in here have been pretty sparse mostly because with both teams off there hasn't been much to write about. Summer always sucks, primarily because it's the off-season, but also because I absolutely positively detest the heat and am miserable for months. But this summer was worse than usual, because of a few different factors, some of which are personal and I'm not getting into those. But one thing that really made me antsy was the lack of Hawks hockey. One thing we could always count on during the off-season was "well, at least we still have our games". But this year for whatever reason, there weren't enough people who could or would commit to a game every week over the summer. There's been lots of frustration with the fact that our games are so late, so I'm sure that had a lot to do with it, as well as people's vacation schedules. (I continue to be somewhat baffled by this. Since when have our games EVER been early? I remember one season where we had a few 7pm Sunday games but that was a long time ago and was never repeated. This is just when our league has ice time.)

When the decision was made I had a pit of nervous "what if everyone doesn't come back in the fall?" anxiety in the back of my mind. But I shoved it aside. Surely it's just that people have much more interesting things to do all summer, though I can't possibly imagine what those things could be. What's more interesting than hockey? The beach? Puh-leeze. So I gritted my way through the summer, somewhat sated by a few tournaments, looking forward to the day when we'd all be gearing back up for a season.

Only.... that hasn't happened yet. What has happened instead is a complete lack of interest on most of the team's part. At last count we had 7 full-time people, and a few other people who said they could sub for a game here or there. That's including the new guy we drafted from open hockey (the aforementioned "Doc"). To say it was a complete let-down for me would be a gross understatement. Coupled with this bombshell was the fact that I had to give up my gym membership (which was pretty expensive as gym memberships go) in the interest of tightening the purse-strings a little. Now, no gym, which also means no yoga class, and now no Hawks?! Does not compute.

A glimmer of hope has been offered, though. It turns out Doc plays on a team one level under us (yes, that's actually possible!), and several of his guys have been itching to move up. So maybe, just maybe, they'll be able to fill in the gaps, and we'll have a season after all. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much though. At the very least if we still don't have a season we'll probably rent some ice a few times. That'll be better than nothing.