Fighting MS in Vermont - Part 2

After our 2-1 win and visit to the ice cream Mecca, we gathered again for our second game of the day. The sign in sheet had us listed as "away", and I distinctly remember asking the girl at the desk "That means we're dark, right?" She confirmed. Then I saw the name of the team we were playing. I'm not the only one who noticed it. Several other people in the locker room commented on it, and quipped that we might want to give the refs a heads-up, since this team apparently likes to body check them. Pants relayed some commentary she overheard while walking through the parking lot. Oh boy, we thought, here we go again.

And then we walked out of the locker room, in our dark jerseys, and the ref was standing there telling us to go back in and change, because the other team only had dark. Ok... this wasn't something they could come and tell us BEFORE we all got dressed? I mean, if you're a team with only one jersey, fine, I get it, but wouldn't you check with the other team in order to avoid a giant clusterfuck? It has definitely happened before, in fact it happened in our first game. They only had powder blue and asked what color we were, to make sure it wouldn't be confusing. Not exactly the most difficult concept in the world. 

So, we were a little miffed at being told just before getting on the ice, to go back and change. Then someone said "What about our socks? Do we have to change those too?" Everyone looked at me. They all know that, given the choice, I'd rather have all dark or all light socks in front of me, and all socks of the opposite side of the spectrum on the other. It's not a huge deal, but it definitely makes a difference. When you're primarily looking down, especially if you're down on the ice already, what you see are socks. When you see socks of one color or the other you know if it's a teammate or not. Is it a huge deal? No. Have I played a million games of open hockey and beer league games where everyone's socks are all different colors? Yes. But in this league, everyone's jerseys and socks tend to match, so that is what I am used to. However, I wasn't about to make a big deal out of it. With all of them looking at me expectantly, I kind of shrugged. I know changing your socks is an enormous pain in the ass, and I didn't feel like I wanted to ask that of everyone. The decision however, was taken out of my hands. Someone spoke up and told the refs to tell them if they want us to change, they have to wait for us to change our socks too. As we were in the locker room changing, a tournament person came in and said they were wearing light socks. The Captain made a split second decision and told everyone to put their socks in a pile - the other team could wear them. 

Looking back, it's a little silly. But clearly it was more gamesmanship than anything else. The Captain explained to the tournament rep that we have a history with this team, and told her about the game where one of their players checked a ref. She explained that if they were going to wait and then make us change, they could change too. By now, I was feeling like an idiot, because no less than three players had sliced their fingers open trying to get their socks off over their skates, one of them pretty badly. But I wasn't the one who had made the decision. Anyway, back out we went, onto the ice. I had just stepped onto the ice from the bench when I turned around and saw one of the opponents standing on our bench, addressing the few of us that were there. 

"I don't understand, what's the reason we all had to change our socks?" she asked. Someone explained that our goalie wants us to all have the same socks. We thought she honestly had come over to ask, so we answered. But the next few things she said made it clear she was there purely to give us a hard time. She started giving us an attitude about the socks. I asked her what took them so long to tell us about the dark jerseys. She huffed and said "We don't know you! We don't know what kind of jerseys you have!" I asked her if it was really that hard to ask. A couple people started talking at once, and one player told her to leave. She then demanded  in a very pissy voice "Where's your goalie?" I'd been standing no more than two feet in front of her, talking to her the entire time, so I opened my arms wide and said "Uhhhh, right here." She said something again about the socks and I, like an idiot, tried to explain. She said, as she turned to leave "Well then you should be a better fucking goalie". Since I never have been the queen of the comeback, I very wittily told her to go fuck herself. 

Were we a little obnoxious about the socks? Yeah, I can admit that now. But not without reason. Did they have to send someone over to our bench before the game to bitch us out? Well, I guess we shouldn't have been surprised. Initially, I was really steamed, but I took a few breaths and told myself not to let it get to me, and concentrated on kicking some ass. Imagine my delight when the final buzzer went off and I had stopped every single one of their shots. I couldn't stop thinking "Clearly I need to be a better goalie. I just shut you bitches out". Unfortunately in the handshake line I couldn't identify the one who'd come over to spout off at us. We didn't win- it was a 0-0 tie, but we still shut them down just the same. I've never had a shutout feel sweeter. 

Our Sunday morning game turned out to be the championship game. The way the tournament was organized, in our division, there was no actual "championship game". The winner was to be decided on a basis of points. But by Sunday morning, it was clear that whoever won our game would win the tournament. And they were just a step faster than we were. We hung in there for most of the game, with the score tied at 2, but in the last few minutes they just really turned it on and we ended up losing 4-2. I didn't even beat myself up over it though- I know I played damn well. We all did. We were just slightly outmatched.

All bullcrap aside, it was a great tournament, and we had a great time. I haven't even written about the fantastic awesomeness that was the Beer Festival... but really what is there to say except that I tried A LOT of beers and even loved some of them, but as luck would have it, I misplaced the program where I made all my notes. I'm actually kind of peeved about that. Anyone on the team will tell you I'm a huge beer aficionado (ok, snob) and I was very much looking forward to trying a lot of quality beers I'd never had. I can tell you though, that my favorite by far was Heady Topper. I was in that line no less than three times. And it was a pretty long line.

Right now I'm on vacation, but we are back on the ice fighting the good fight this coming weekend - this time in Bethlehem, PA. And this time, we're bringing THREE teams. Heads up, bitches. Here come the Quarry Cats. 

Fighting MS in Vermont - Part 1

It's not every day your team makes it onto a newscast. But then again, it's not every day your team gets a chance to help raise money for MS research. This year the QCats brought two teams to the Hockey Fights MS tournament held in South Burlington, Vermont, and I was fortunate to be one of the goalies. I was very excited about it, not just because of the location (and, as luck would have it, the beer fest going on that weekend), but also because a good friend of mine was recently diagnosed with MS.

It was quite a drive but it was so worth it. It was a typical tournament schedule: one game on Friday, two on Saturday, one on Sunday. But given the duration of the drive to get there (between 5 and 6 hours, depending on traffic), many of us decided to head up a day early. We seem to always do poorly in the first game of a tournament, and most of us are pretty sure that's due to the "road legs" we all have from the long drive to get there. So, on a Thursday morning in the middle of a heat wave, The Mayor and I hit the road. The further we got into the Adirondacks, the more beautiful the scenery got. We had the extra treat of taking a ferry to cross Lake Champlain from NY to VT. It was easy to find- all we had to do was follow the "Jesus car" signs:

Even though it was one more night to pay for in a hotel, it turned out to be a really good idea to head up early. When we got there, we had plenty of time to relax. We parked ourselves in the Captain's room, and as people arrived they drifted in and before long we had a typical QCat party in full swing.

Our games weren't until Friday evening, so we had a full day to explore the beauty of Vermont. Most of the team went on a three hour schooner ride, on a gorgeous wooden sailboat. They tried and tried to get me to join them, and as much as I love the water in general, and sailing in particular, the prospect of spending three hours in the blazing sun on a 95 degree day did not appeal to me in the least. Even with all my teammates and a cooler full of refreshments. I knew I made the right choice, but I was pretty bummed out when everyone was gone and I was left to my own devices. I had brought a book and intended to spend a few hours reading by the pool, but as luck would have it, when I went out to replenish our cooler ice, I ran into someone from another team with whom we're all friendly.  She mentioned that she and some friends were heading out to take a tour of the Magic Hat brewery, which was only minutes away. It couldn't have worked out more perfectly.  To be honest, at first I said no, because aaaaaahhh people I don't know. But I told myself to knock it off and take her up on the offer, and I was glad I did. We visited not only Magic Hat, but another brewery, Fiddlehead, at which I bought a mini growler of Double IPA to bring home for the hubs.

Given that most of the team was out on their booze cruise, I was a little worried about the game Friday night. As a twitter friend pointed out, dehydration and heat stroke would probably make for a pretty busy game for me. I needn't have worried. I had three shots. And regrettably, one goal. Games like those are actually extremely difficult, because keeping your focus is a real challenge (as you can tell by that abysmal GAA).

Friday night was a pretty tame night, because we all had early games on Saturday morning, and my team's first game was in a rink a half an hour away. (In the middle of a cornfield. I shit you not.) It was a much more even affair, and we came away with a 2-1 win. With only two hours between the end of that game and the beginning of the next, we high-tailed it out of there so we had time to hit the Ben & Jerry's factory on the way back to the other, closer, rink. There wasn't enough time for a tour, but there was plenty of time to enjoy some delicious ice cream.

(I'm the one in the vulgar t-shirt. And championship hat.)

It turned out to be pretty good pre-game fuel, despite my reservations about having a belly full of dairy product before a game. Of course, the fire in my belly from the nonsense that went on before the game probably had a lot more to do with my overall performance. As luck would have it, we were matched up against a team we'd faced in a tournament earlier this year, one that played dirty, and had a player who, coming out of the penalty box at the end of the game, actually checked one of the refs.  We should have known we were in for some drama when the passive aggressive commentary started out in the parking lot when two of our players passed two of theirs. Were we entirely innocent in the shenanigans that followed? Probably not. But we decided to give back to them a little of what they gave to us. 

On The Road Again

Ever since I was about 5 years old, my family has been making annual pilgrimages to Cape Cod for a week in the summer. My mom's side of the family is from there, so we have a big 'ol reunion every year. It's a blast. One year, when my sister and I were still living at home in the summers, during our college years, we had to take two cars because my Dad had to leave halfway through the week to go to work. My parents were in one car, my sister and I were in the other. It was the mobile equivalent of the "kids' table" at Thanksgiving dinner. That trip remains to this day one of the best in my memory.

One thing that made it especially memorable was our method of communication between the two cars. My Dad had the brilliant idea to purchase a set of walkie-talkies. They were clearly intended to be nothing more than toys, as they were both bright yellow plastic, one with a red knob on the end of the antenna, the other with a yellow one. They didn't work unless the cars were very close to each other, and to conserve battery life, we left them switched off until we needed to communicate. The signal to turn your walkie-talkie on was someone from the other car waving their walkie-talkie out the window. It was nothing short of fantastic.

Fast forward holy crap is it really something like 20 years- and Flipper (@lct29) The Mayor and GoalieHusband and I are on our way up to a tournament in Massachusetts.  Flipper and The Mayor are in one car, and GoalieHusband and I are following behind. Cell phones have eliminated the need for ridiculous walkie-talkie displays out the car windows, but the content of the messages wasn't much more mature. In response to an "Are we there yet????" text, The Mayor proceeded to text us every two miles to tell us how many more miles of the trip were yet to be traveled. There were also several Beavis & Butthead-esque exchanges, as well as lots of speculation as to where exactly my hands were, if they weren't both on the steering wheel.

I'm not sure I believe in coincidences, but let's just pretend for a moment- by coincidence, my sister happened to call just as we were heading up I-495. I told her where we were, and that I'd been thinking about that trip we made up to the Cape so many years ago. She laughed and said "Oh, the time we were rocking out in the car the entire time?" Yep. That was the other thing that made it so memorable. A complete performance of Bohemian Rhapsody at as high a decibel level as that 1995 Neon would allow.

So here we are. Relaxing for a bit before heading over to the rink for our first game, which is at 9:40. We're aiming to get there early, so we have time to check in, and oggle all the gift baskets available for "auction". (It's a tricky-tray type thing.) I just remembered that last year there were several Bruins baskets. One of them had several Tuukka-signed items in it. I bought tickets for it, but didn't win. If there is anything even remotely Tuukka-associated this year, I'm buying butt-loads of tickets for it. That puppy will be MINE.

Time to log off for now... lines are being arranged, and I have to bring my jersey in from the balcony over the pool where I hung it the minute we got here.

GO CATS!!!

Get 'Em Next Time

It feels so weird to be writing about a tournament in February that I can't figure out how to get started. Perhaps my brain is warming up for the writer's block I'll have later when I finally force myself to sit down and work on my resume. (If I keep ignoring it, it'll go away.... right???)

The weekend started off with what could have been quite a disaster. Flipper (aka lct29) and The Mayor stopped at my office to pick me up, and we were barely 2 minutes into our journey when I spilled the entire cup of coffee I'd just purchased- all over my feet. If you've ever bought coffee at a Dunkin Donuts, you know they serve it at approximately 387*F. We were just pulling out of the parking lot and I let up a howl that had Flipper wondering where the nearest hospital was, and in my panic, I thought if I could just get out of the Jeep the pain would stop, so I opened the door and swung my legs out. That was when logic kicked in and I realized, duh, just take off your socks, idiot. With several people behind us, we couldn't just stop, so we pulled into a gas station next door to assess the damage.

I felt absolutely awful about dumping a whole cup of coffee into Flipper's car, but fortunately what didn't end up on my legs and feet all went on the floormat. There was a large angry red patch on my foot, but no blisters were forming, so we counted our blessings and I kept an ice pack from the cooler on my foot for the next hour. It did end up blistering, but not until sometime overnight. What saved me from a certain 3rd degree burn was the fact that I was wearing socks. Pretty ironic considering I'm a big proponent of being barefoot. Perhaps I need to reconsider that, at least when I've got a scalding hot cup of coffee in my hand.

Coffee mishap notwithstanding, it was an otherwise uneventful trip. We got to the hotel with plenty of time to spare, and made our way over to the rink early so there'd be time to figure out where we were going, and sign in, and all that fun stuff. I don't know if it's the stress of travel, or traffic or what, but we always seem to have a bad first game in our tournaments. I figured we'd be ok, with all the extra time we had, but that was not the case.

We definitely could have beaten the team we played, but all of us seemed to be a step off. We ended up losing 4-2, and I'd like just about all of those goals back. Monx77 was busy beating herself up over a turnover that resulted in a goal, but that certainly wasn't the deciding factor in the game. We just.... crapped the bed. That's the only way to describe it. The other team was ridiculously chippy and bitchy, too. So much so, that one player got called for unsportsmanlike conduct - mid game - for yapping at the ref. Apparently she'd been warned already but just kept at it. They took lots of penalties, and we only took one. And when we did get called for that penalty, their entire bench erupted in cheers. So, not the classiest team we've ever played.

That was Friday night, and since it was a late game we knew nothing would be open afterwards, food-wise, so Pants had brought up an entire sandwich and salad and cookies spread. We feasted in her room, all 13 of us jammed in there, listening to music and drinking beer and flinging ping-pong balls at each other in a modified version of "carpet pong". Gionta182 supplied us with a box of 36 balls, so for an all-female team, there were an awful lot of balls flying around.

We had two games on Saturday, and we played extremely well in both. The first was a 3-1 (I think???) win, and the second was a shutout for me, 5-0. If we'd played like that we'd have easily beaten Friday night's team. And that team was the one that ended up going on to the championship game, too. Those two things combined kind of stuck in our craw. Even though we had a great time and had two really strong games, we were all pretty bummed about not playing on Sunday. Discussing it on the ride home, Flipper and The Mayor and I decided it seemed to have a lot to do with playing right after traveling up there. (It was about a 4 1/2 hour trip). We have another tournament in just over a month, and we all decided that if we can, we'll take Friday off work and head up in the morning, so we're up there and settled way before game time. I know that would make a huge difference for me - I always seem to be janky and just not quite right when playing right after a road trip.  So the verdict for this one was: lots of fun, but we know we can do better, and are looking forward to the chance to prove it.

Whoa, what day is it?

How fast the time flies when you're flat on your back in a fevered fog. The first part of our trip went beautifully- we got to see the Predators and Blues, and made it back home in time for a few hours of sleep before heading out for our last "regular season" game. I'm glad we did it that way, and would probably do it again, even though I'm sure the push to drive through the night and not sleep is why I ended up sicker than I've been in a very long time. Oh, I felt fine on Monday night, great actually, because we were out for revenge on a team that beat us a few weeks earlier, and got it: to the tune of a 5-1 win. And yes ladies and gents, that is officially the lowest goals-against of my "career". So I was quite happy about that.

Unfortunately, by Tuesday afternoon I was huddled in bed, sweating and shivering, and my husband finally had enough of my moaning and dragged me to a doctor on Thursday. He says I had/have sinusitis, I think I had/have the flu. Regardless, he gave me antibiotics, and today I'm actually fever-free for the first time in days. I still feel like a bus hit me, but at least I was up and around a little bit today. Unfortunately, this ruined our vacation plans of playing lots of open hockey, and traveling to Ottawa for today's Ranger/Senator game. And now I am feeling just good enough to be frustrated. I have several important events coming up this week; Monday we have our first playoff game and we have tickets to the Rangers game on Thursday. (The other is not hockey-related). As it is now, I'm not sure if I'm even going to work on Monday, so I doubt I'll be playing. Which is really, really, really hard for me to do. Because I'm sure I could probably push myself to play. In fact, I may feel pretty good on Monday night. Not playing if I feel good is going to be extremely difficult, but I think it will have to be done. Under no circumstances do I want to be that sick again if I have anything to do with it. I really hope that by Thursday I can go to the Rangers game, but I'm not even counting on that.

I'm never this sick, this often. I think it's time to start drinking a lot more. I'm sure that has a lot to do with it. The fever left me extremely dehydrated, and I probably wasn't hydrated well to begin with. Lots of fluids and vitamins for me now.... I'm not letting this happen again.

Success breeds insanity

Last night our meager 1-4-1 team went up against the #1 team in the league. It was a frustrating game to start out with, as we were down 5-2 at one point in the 2nd period. But somehow we managed to rally and ended up with a 7-6 win. It felt so good to see the skaters break out and just keep burying the puck in the net to bring us up to a tie, and then put us over the top. I vowed to do everything possible to keep my end of the bargain. After one particularly exhilarating (if not gray-hair-inducing) save and subsequent scuffle to cover the puck, a team-mate said "just keep us in this thing". I got up and said "you bet!"... and I managed to keep my word.

Riding the high from a come-behind win against the best team in the league inspired my husband and I to pledge to be back for next week's game- even though we'd originally planned to be away. Oh we're still going away- we have tickets for games in Nashville and St. Louis this weekend - but we're going to drive like bats out of batcaves to get back in time for Monday night's game. It's a little nuts, but it's not like we had anything planned for the trip home other than to meander through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Armchair geologist that I am, I know that they're not going anywhere anytime soon, and we have a trip to Atlanta to make, so we can do our meandering then.

Of course, in the light of day, after realizing we booked a hotel for after the game in St. Louis, this plan seems a little silly. But hotels can be cancelled. What matters is that no one else is going to be in that net but me. Now I better stand on my pinky next week or I'll feel mighty stupid...