Breakfast Club Session II with Laura
The token female from Wednesday does a little date shifting this week, and lo and behold I find that there are three sister skaters who skate with the Tuesday Farmington group. A virtual swarm o’ sistahs in hockey terms. We have Martha, Fiona and Sarah. Courtney, hey, I thought you were clubbing, too? If you were there, we could have had a full chick line during the half-ice scrimmage at the end.
But I’m jumping ahead.
So what’s wrong with jumping ahead, anyway? Not the kind of jumping ahead where you try to take what is due to someone else. No, I mean jumping ahead as in improving your own position. Improving your own situation does not necessarily mean someone else has to suffer. You can jump ahead by skating faster. You can jump ahead by keeping your head up and “on a swivel” so you are always aware of where the play is going. You can jump ahead by controlling the puck. You can jump ahead by zinging a blistering wrist shot. All the kinds of things we work on each week. Why? So we can jump ahead.
I can’t comprehend playing beer league hockey at my current level for the rest of my life. I can’t imagine never getting better. But, if all you do is show up once each week to play beer league hockey with a bunch of other fools, the likelihood that you’re going to improve your game is remote at best. In all likelihood, to be blunt, you will probably not only fail to get better but you will probably get worse over time.
In a game, you rarely take risks. You do what you do because you’ve always done it, and you don’t do something you’ve never done because you’ve never done it. A very convoluted way of saying you stay in your comfort zone. Unless you play on a team that takes itself way more serious than any beer league team that I’ve ever seen, your team will never practice together. You will simply play games week after week...in your comfort zone. Which, as you get older and your body isn’t quite as strong or quick as it used to be, your comfort zone starts getting narrower. Until it less resembles a zone and looks more like a rut.
I enjoy playing hockey way too much to let myself fall into a rut. If I ever allow myself to feel satisfied rotting in my rut, please, do me a favor and invoke hockey euthanasia on me.
So keep your head up, and your eyes on the goal.
But I’m jumping ahead.
So what’s wrong with jumping ahead, anyway? Not the kind of jumping ahead where you try to take what is due to someone else. No, I mean jumping ahead as in improving your own position. Improving your own situation does not necessarily mean someone else has to suffer. You can jump ahead by skating faster. You can jump ahead by keeping your head up and “on a swivel” so you are always aware of where the play is going. You can jump ahead by controlling the puck. You can jump ahead by zinging a blistering wrist shot. All the kinds of things we work on each week. Why? So we can jump ahead.
I can’t comprehend playing beer league hockey at my current level for the rest of my life. I can’t imagine never getting better. But, if all you do is show up once each week to play beer league hockey with a bunch of other fools, the likelihood that you’re going to improve your game is remote at best. In all likelihood, to be blunt, you will probably not only fail to get better but you will probably get worse over time.
In a game, you rarely take risks. You do what you do because you’ve always done it, and you don’t do something you’ve never done because you’ve never done it. A very convoluted way of saying you stay in your comfort zone. Unless you play on a team that takes itself way more serious than any beer league team that I’ve ever seen, your team will never practice together. You will simply play games week after week...in your comfort zone. Which, as you get older and your body isn’t quite as strong or quick as it used to be, your comfort zone starts getting narrower. Until it less resembles a zone and looks more like a rut.
I enjoy playing hockey way too much to let myself fall into a rut. If I ever allow myself to feel satisfied rotting in my rut, please, do me a favor and invoke hockey euthanasia on me.
So keep your head up, and your eyes on the goal.
posted by Suburban Hockey @ 5:09 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home