Hockey: A Year In Review

About this time last year I formed a street hockey group. It all started when I went home one spring break and cleared the remainder of my belongings from my folks attic. Among my treasures was the stick I used to play roller hockey with in high school. I took it with me back to Utah with the idea I would get a quick $100 for it by posting the stick in the classifieds. When I sat down to list the stick, my intentions shifted, and I decided I wasn't quite ready to retire the ole girl. Instead of using the classified section to sell my stick, I wrote an ad asking if anyone in Cache Valley had an interest in playing roller hockey. Over the next couple weeks, enough responded to organize a game. Our first game was April 18th and since then we have played nearly every week. There are now nearly 50 names on "the list" and it continues to grow. Nolan has helped me recruit more players and even formed a club at the university. The school paper recently published an article about our street hockey group.  As the club has grown, we have been getting a lot of new players, some that have never played hockey before.  They would ask me for tips on how to improve their game and after realizing a lot of the questions were similar I created a website where I could publish all of my street hockey tips. Surely there are other street hockey players around the world that could benefit from this type of coaching, I reasoned, so why not make the info public. It has been a lot of fun to share my experiences and fun to get feedback from other players.

A co-worker of mine knew I played street hockey on the weekends, and he invited me to play on his ice hockey team. All it took was one game for me to discover how much I love the sport, so I joined the team. Although I am not much of an ice skater the guys have been pretty patient and accepting. I haven't decided if I like playing on the ice more than the street, but I'm just glad I have an excuse to play more hockey. I wish I would have discovered it sooner!