Becsta.COM: My Ice Hockey Addiction
Whenever I say to my fellow Australians, “I play ice hockey,” they usually exclaim “Do Australians play ice hockey? I thought it was an American game!”.
Well, in fact, it’s very much an International game. More and more NHL and European players are heading on down to Aussieland to play during their off-seasons. It’s fantastic for us, because they get so involved when they’re over here, and they head home extolling the virtues of Australian Ice Hockey.
Sure, the game in Australia is small, but it’s growing. I’m quite heavily involved in the sport now (it really is an addiction), and I’m having fun whilst being involved, and I’m losing weight, gaining new friends, and becoming a respected member of the ice hockey community.
I have another addiction which led to this addiction - skiing. The two are inextricably linked, by my sister’s birthday. You see, I was heading on down to the snow to go skiing, and her birthday intervened. Instead of giving her a present, I gave her an IOU card.
Upon my return, I took her down to the skate shop, and bought her a pair of ice hockey skates, deciding at the same time to get some for myself, ‘coz ice skating is quite a lot of fun!
Skating lessons with figure skating school on Saturday mornings led into ice hockey lessons with Development League on Sunday mornings, and I quickly dropped the Saturday morning lessons. The ice hockey lessons were fast, hard, unforgiving, because I was so unfit!
I spent six months or so learning how to skate, how to control the puck, how to shoot at goal, how to fall over, and get back up again, how to play the game, where to stand, how to fall over, how to be pushed over, tripped, smashed into the boards (actually, it wasn’t all that bad, really).
I joined the Sydney Bears Ice Hockey Club Senior C team in 2005. Apart from not being able to skate, I had an awesome time. It was hard, the boys pushed me hard, and I improved.
Season 2006 came along, and I joined the Liverpool Saints Ice Hockey Club Womens Team, because the Bears didn’t form a womens team. Now that league was fun! I scored lots of goals, skated hard, had even more fun than 2005, and pressed for selection to the NSW Womens Team, but failed.
The end of year 2006 was memorable. Somehow, I managed to get onto the South Australian Womens Team, and played my first State-level games in Brisbane for South Australia, competing for the Joan McKowen Memorial Trophy. After four grueling days, we played seven games, and came out the other end holding the Trophy. We’d defeated NSW twice - they were unable to score a single goal against us.
So now Season 2007 is almost upon us. I’m playing for the Sydney Bears Womens Team, playing against my team mates of last year, and I can’t wait to see how we fare. The Bears Womens team should be strong - we have four State players, one or two Canadian girls who’ve been playing from way back, and the rest of us are mad keen.
