Julia

Chapter 1: Cigars and Bourbon

“Then sing something.”

The first time he said it, I thought he was joking. He was not the first person I had ever met that I had told about my singing background, but he was certainly the first who had demanded that I demonstrate it on the spot.

I could see he was looking at me intently, expectantly.

He was serious.

And so was I. He had been talking a bit about his early days playing hockey professionally in Quebec when I asked him if he spoke French. He said he did. I said I could sing in French, which is how we landed here.

I may have had more scotch than I realized, but I took another swig to smooth my somewhat dry throat. I leaned in as if telling him a secret, and I sang the first verse and chorus of Pink Martini’s “Sympathique,” a song I have always loved. He wasn’t the only one who heard me, but I thought he was likely the only one who understood the lyrics and their dark take on love. He raised his eyebrows, “Very good,” he said.

“Did I get the pronunciation right?”

“You did.”

I drank more scotch in relief and the group that formed around us now switched the subject back to hockey. A few other attendees let me know that the fellow who listened to my song ran a local hockey program, and he was at the event with a few of the adult players he coached. An exuberant bunch, these players encouraged me to join them when I mentioned that I, too, was learning to play. The age-range of their group appealed to me—other older adults new to playing hockey. I found that information encouraging and something to consider, although their rink was not close to my current apartment in Merrifield, Va.

We were on the roof of the W Hotel in Washington at an annual charity event where fans could smoke cigars and sip whiskey with former Washington Capitals players. One of the adult newbies there was chatting with a younger man who would be playing in the Capitals alumni game the next day. Earlier in the evening, I had learned that two roster spots for this annual charity event had been auctioned off to fans.

An idea began to form in my mind as I chatted with the winner. In many ways, the thought was preposterous. But, my mind kept circling back to it, given that the winner was somewhat new to the sport and I was surrounded by others who were learning as well. The love for hockey was palpable with this group. It was contagious, although I had caught that love for hockey well before now.

I turned to the coach, a former pro who also would be playing in the event. “You need a woman out there next year,” I said.

“It should be you.” He said it without missing a beat, without hesitation. I thought at first he was joking—I had been very honest about my hockey level and inability. I thought he was messing with me.

But, I looked at him. He had the same look on his face as when he had asked me to sing. No joking smirk. No wink and a nod. He was sincere.

I was thrown, although I did my best to hide it. I had known this man for maybe 15 minutes, and already he had challenged me twice to show what I could do, to be excellent, to back up my words and boozy bravado with actions. Maybe he would be the right coach for this crazy goal.

“OK,” I said. I downed the rest of my scotch and wondered what a year could do.

Chapter 2: Rock ‘n’ Roll

If timelines held, I would need to be ready by the end of June 2018 to play in the 2018 Capitals Alumni Summer Classic. I had no time to waste. At this point in 2017, when it came to hockey, I truly was starting over.

Although I took my first adult hockey classes in Kettler’s Learn to Play program in summer 2014, I had stopped those classes by February 2015. An increased workload followed by a family health scare necessitated some major life changes that severely cut into ice time for me. I watched hockey as much as ever, but my own efforts were limited to sporadic skills classes in the DC area and Ohio.

My father had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and the condition made it difficult for him to travel more than 3 hours away. Because I generally work remotely, I decided to sell my Takoma Park house of 18 years, buy a house closer to my parents in Ohio, and rent something small in Virginia for my work there. As the dust settled from these transitions, I had by spring 2017 found a newbie scrimmage league in Ohio and a rink to practice skating nearby in Fairfax.

But, I was feeling that two-year hiatus acutely on July 31 as I walked into the adult program discovered during conversation at the Cigar and Bourbon event. I had done a full scrimmage maybe seven times in my life. Generally, I preferred skills classes because there was no team for me to disappoint with my ineptitude. I was relieved to find out that nobody kept score during these scrimmages. And I was extremely happy to see a few familiar faces from the event that had inspired my crazy idea.

Once on the ice, I followed the strategy that I had followed from my days as a basketball player—get open on offense and get in the way on defense. I added recent advice from my Ohio hockey coach to stay on whatever side I had chosen, to be a left or right winger and stick with that on both sides of the ice. Skill levels varied, although the friendliness of those on the ice did not.

Unlike other scrimmages and pick-up opportunities, we played here while rink speakers blared. It helped so much. Lots of classic rock I had not heard in a while, many songs I knew well, that I could get lost in between the 1:30 shifts designated by buzzer. The coach played with us, which also helped. Zipping among the players, he helped set up plays and added some structure to the confusion of the new.

On my last shift, I skated to Led Zeppelin’s “Rock n Roll,” a song I love until I need a break from it. On that night, it was perfect, and I took it as a sign that my crazy plan might not be impossible.

I was stretching on the wall after the game, when the Coach came over. “You were better than I thought you’d be.” In any other context, I might have taken offense at this assessment. But that night, I thought someone had awarded me the Pulitzer Prize.

Chapter 3: Stick-To-It-Tiveness

After I survived that initial session, I soon found myself at the rink two, three, even four days a week. When ice time allowed, the Coach added adult skills classes, and I did my best to make every one. I had no time to lose. Despite the time lapse, I had been playing hockey for maybe a year, if you add up my previous sporadic skills class attendance and current efforts. The more I learned, the more I saw how much I didn’t know or how much I had misconstrued.

For instance, because of varying advice related to using my inside edges for power, I had mistakenly spent much of the summer skating only on my inside edges. It’s a common mistake and one I often see in new skaters. My hockey coach in Ohio had been working with me to get the glide back as well as any stride length. (He had taken to calling me “Short Stride.”) Skating had been my strength—or so I thought–but now it required endless tweaks.

My relationship with my stick was worse. If anyone bumped me or if I fell, my stick flew out of my hands and across the ice. I was growing adept as the loose-stick scramble. Exasperated one night, I asked the coach what I was doing wrong.

“If your stick is flying out of your hands that means your grip needs to be stronger.”

“But, aren’t you trying to have ‘soft hands’? “I asked, “I try not to clench the stick too much.”

“Yes,” he said. “But soft hands doesn’t mean soft grip. It means soft arms and shoulders.”

From that point forward, scrimmages got much better for me and less amusing for others.

As I resolved each misunderstanding and worked on improving each basic skill, I ultimately wasn’t surprised that I would take a hit in a scrimmage before I would score a goal. It was mid-October toward the end of one of our Wednesday night scrimmages. Slowly but steadily, my confidence had been growing, and I was trying to be more aggressive about stealing pucks.

An opponent was coming toward me. I planted myself in front of him, trying to gauge when I could dart around to take the puck. Generally, the better players just scooted around me, and I ended up having to chase them down. This time, he didn’t do so, and I thought I had a chance to swipe the biscuit. But as I went for it, I realized at the last split second that he was moving directly at me, his head down, eyes on the puck. He did not see me. It flashed through my mind: I’m about to get hit by a train.

And, I did. Because it happened so fast, it would take a video review to see that at the last second he had tried to adjust to avoid me and had instead slammed me full-on, his stick going up across my throat, which left me hoarse for the rest of that night and for several days after.

It goes without saying that he was beyond apologetic, and all nearby were extremely concerned as they helped me up. As I sat on the bench before the last shift in the game, I asked my teammate if it were possible to break your throat. He wasn’t sure, but we concluded that a broken throat was probably serious and obvious and because I seemed okay, it probably wasn’t broken. Such conversations happen on hockey benches more than you would imagine among people without medical degrees to support their assertions.

So, I got on the ice for my last shift—all 130 pounds of me, despite my brief flattening by an opponent almost twice my size. 

I hung around afterward as we usually did, talking about the game, watching and discussing the hit, seeing myself bounce off the ice from the force of it, listening as my voice grew closer and closer to “Bette Davis Eyes” hoarseness.

After seeing the video, the Coach said: “I can’t believe you got up after that and kept playing.”

“Thanks,” I said, and thought to myself, “All the boys think she’s a spy.”

Chapter 4: Mind on Fire

I still wasn’t good, but I had some hope. I was on the ice as much as possible, including helping out with a few kids’ programs at the rink. My deadline would be here before I knew it, and I wanted to take in as much on-ice knowledge as possible. Sometimes, I was overwhelmed by how much I needed to know and how little time I had. I needed focus, too.

I knew that asking my Coach what I needed to work on most could truthfully elicit the response, “Everything.” But I asked him anyway. I didn’t know what I expected him to choose of the many areas I needed to improve. Puck management came to mind, because of the ease with which I lost pucks by myself or through the help of others.

But, without hesitating, he said, “Speed.”

As was becoming usual for me when I asked him a question, I didn’t see that answer coming—mostly because I didn’t think speed was an option. Sure, I figured I could become a more efficient skater, a better puck handler, a more strategic player in general.

But, speed? I thought you either had fast-twitch muscles or you didn’t, and I have been in the “didn’t” category since middle school. I only win races out of sheer stubbornness, never out of speed. That quick-burst sprint power has eluded me since my basketball days. Put me in a short sprint contest, and I will be last. Make us run around the gym until people puke or quit, and I will win.

We happened to have this conversation around a fellow player who is an incredible skater. Luckily, he teaches skating, and it was determined that some lessons could help.

“The form is there,” Coach said to him about my skating. “But she has slow feet.”

So, my new skating coach and I began to take measures, my brain on overdrive as I wondered what was possible. My first lesson was right before Thanksgiving, at a different Maryland rink during a busy weekend public skate. My skating coach was in typical coaching attire, i.e., no gear, as he dashed around the rink, directing me to replicate his movements, changing up from footwork, to turns, to backward skating, to tight circles. I was in full gear, doing my best to match, falling more than I had in weeks, relishing the chase for the first time ever in such a packed venue.

Near the end of that first lesson, I fell fast and did the bad instinctive wrist reach to brace my fall. I ended up in Urgent Care the next day, thankful that the pain and swelling ultimately indicated nothing that a brace for a few days couldn’t handle, but also annoyed to be dealing with such an issue right before the holiday.

Truth be told, I also loved it. That wrist injury never would have happened if I had played it safe. And, if I had played it safe and not fallen constantly, I never would have had brief moments when I actually felt fast for the first time ever.

With his recommendation to focus on speed, Coach had reminded me of something I had felt way back in my early days of skating. I was not going to be a good skater. I was going to be an incredible skater. I suspected when I first started that I could be. But then I lost sight of that goal among the myriad skills I needed and didn’t have.

My excellence might not happen in time for the Alumni Game, but it would happen—whether one, or two, or 10 years down the road I would be a great skater. It was just one more example of the way hockey and those I met through hockey gave me not only hope but also confidence. Even when, objectively, I had no real reason for either.

Chapter 5: Day Late, Dollar Short

My progress continued, although it often felt like one skate forward, two skates back. As I grew to understand how to work within the flow of the game, I could watch the LiveBarn video feed afterward and see how my efforts either worked or failed. But watching tape was hard. On those rare days when I felt like I had been flying out there, had kicked some butt and taken many names, all I had to do to disabuse myself of that assessment was watch the tape. Glacial. I was glacial. And tight. Lots of folks I played with flat-out refused to watch themselves ever. It was just too demoralizing.

Coach kept yelling at me to use my arms, and I know he thought I was ignoring him because I didn’t do it. He would demonstrate it, and I would think I was doing it. But, I wasn’t. I had to watch the tape to understand what he meant. The coach can see you, but you can’t see you, and some stuff just won’t ever make sense until you see yourself doing or not doing that particularly annoying thing in all its horrifying glory.

“Do my shoulders seem tight when I skate?” I asked him. “I was watching tape from last night. Kinda look all bunched up above the waist.”

“Yes,” Coach said. “Perfect description.”

“What will fix that? Move my arms more?”

“That’s part of it,” he said.

“I look mechanical, like a wind-up hockey doll.”

“At times mechanical,” he said. “I bet you don’t even hear me when I say to move your arms.”

He was right. I hadn’t really heard. There were so many things to fix in any given session that I know I missed corrections, without meaning to. And, sometimes, correcting one thing would affect something else.

It began to dawn on me that keeping my arms so still and looking mechanical came from two related motivations: hanging onto my stick and protecting the puck. So much for soft arms and shoulders—I was skating with a death grip, lest I go back to the bad old stick-chasing days.

And sometimes, it didn’t even take tape or a conversation with Coach to learn something the hard way. Another coach who worked at the rink had been watching my progress as well. DC Native knew what I was trying to do in terms of playing in the Alumni Game, and he often had helpful suggestions. After a game that I thought had gone particularly well, he rushed right over to me as I was leaving the ice with some of the other players.

He handed me a dollar. “What’s this for,” I asked?

“It’s because you are a day late and a dollar short.” None of us expected that explanation.

“Jules, Jules, Jules, you have to keep your eyes on the play, know where your teammates are. You are passing to where people were, not to where they are, or even better, to where they were going. And when you managed to be in the play, you would turn your back on it to do, I don’t know what.”

“Okay,” I said. The other players were open-mouthed, not sure if they should creep away and change out of their gear or provide mute moral support by remaining nearby.

“But wasn’t I part of the play more than usual?” His feedback was confusing me because I had touched the puck and passed it way more than I generally did. It was why I had felt great about the game, until this conversation had started.

“Yes, yes, you were. But, you also watched the play so much that by the time you decided what to do, the play had gone past you. You have to commit. Even if it ends up the wrong thing to do, you have to commit to the play. You can’t just wait around out there.”

He was intense in his criticism, but like many hockey people, he is an intense guy. He loves this game. And although the other players who witnessed this exchange thought it had come out of nowhere, like I had offended the hockey gods in some major way, I knew better. He cared—about hockey, yes, but also about me, about what I was trying to do, about the other players who overheard his advice.

Some people don’t like to get yelled at. Sure, I will never allow that from a significant other again, but I expect it from my hockey coaches. I appreciate it from my hockey coaches. It’s an intense game that will just pass you by if you are looking in the wrong place or taking too long to decide. Just like life.

Chapter 6: Line Shuffling

Although I was starting to joke with friends and co-workers about setting up a hammock and sleeping at the rink, I did find time for hockey that wasn’t just about training. Before the Capitals Cigar and Bourbon Night, I had attended their Casino Night and loved it. This year would be no different.

Taking place in January 2018 when the Caps hadn’t fully coalesced into the team that would win the Cup a few months later, the event had an odd feel to it. The “prove it to me” mentality from which many Caps fans suffer was just below the surface, and the Raconteur commented on it multiple times as we wandered about the event. Casino Night should have been a celebration, as previous ones had been, but the fan apprehension was unmistakable.

Even so, Raconteur and I were tickled to be there mingling with the players, chatting with them, and getting autographs. Whatever the fans might think, the players had a quiet confidence and calm that I was happy to see.

And, Barry Trotz cemented my loyalty to him when during our conversation he changed the subject entirely to wanting to know why I had decided to start playing hockey in my 40s. He was encouraging and one of the best hockey ambassadors I have ever met.

Because of my odd schedule split between Ohio and the DMV, I had not attended one of these events since 2015, and I was thrilled to attend, and truth be told, just happy to be thinking about something other than my crazy goal.

But that relaxation wouldn’t last long. As we watched the auction, Peter Bondra and some other alumni suddenly put up two slots for fans to play in the Stadium Series game that would be held in the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium on March 3.

“Woah, what does this mean?” I asked the Raconteur.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Do you think you need to bid on this instead?”

My mind was in a riot. Would they still do the usual June game? If I was concerned about being ready by June, could I possibly be ready by March? And, could my parents get to the game in March? If I don’t get this spot now, will I have to wait until summer 2019 for the regular Capitals Alumni Summer Classic?

This whole situation had come completely out of nowhere.

“I really don’t know. What are we supposed to do with this?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

The conversation continued like this as we watched one of the spots go for a lot of money and wondered if I needed to bid now or kiss all the planning since last June goodbye until summer 2019. My bid card was getting itchy in my hand.

“I can donate to the cause, if you think you need to get this now,” Raconteur said.

“Thank you,” I took a deep breath.

“But, I’m pretty sure my parents can’t get here for the March game, and I honestly don’t think I’ll be ready in six weeks. Let’s hold off and see what happens. I gotta believe they will still have the regular game. And, if not, this is just too soon for so many reasons.”

I may have sounded calm, but I was far from it. And, once the chance was gone, I wondered how much of the past several months had slipped away with it.

My worry didn’t last long. As has been true of hockey from the very beginning for me, I found what I needed right when I needed it. Peter Bondra walked by me after the auction fiasco.

“Excuse me,” I said to him.

He stopped. “Yes?” he smiled.

“Are you still planning to do the summer alumni game, even with this Winter Classic one?

“Yes, we are.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That is great news.”

Raconteur and I breathed a sigh of relief at surviving these Mary Tyler Moore episode-level shenanigans.

Within a few days, my Coach also had confirmed that the summer game was still on. In the following days they auctioned off more slots, and my skating coach won one. This Stadium Series alumni game was not open to the public, but he sent me video of the goals he scored. Soon, it would be my turn.

Chapter 7: Shifts

During the spring, my training continued, now four nights back-to-back during the week as well as ice on weekends. But, as luck and history would have it, I had other hockey things on my mind as well: The Capitals were succeeding in their quest for the Cup, a drive that we gathered to watch in the rink after practice. Raconteur and I had Game 6 tickets.

In an interview before Stanley Cup game one in Las Vegas, TJ Oshie was asked if the Capitals could practice Vegas’s fast start to prepare. His answer touched on the game’s speed and unpredictable nature: “You can’t really emulate a game in practice like you would think you would be able to. The game is too fast, too physical to try to simulate in practice.”

His response got to the heart of something I noticed the first time I saw a hockey game. When things happen in hockey, they happen fast, without warning, and the only thing you can do is stay fully present and ready to adjust.

When you play hockey, you know things will change in unpredictable ways with uncommon speed. But when we live our lives, we often are led to believe that a plan can protect us, that we are mostly in control, that we can emulate and prepare, that we have our five-year increments to follow. People who believe this are football fans.

From the first moment of the first game I ever saw I was a hockey fan because its action unfolded the way my life has: a game plan out the window because of sudden and often painful circumstances, where adjustments required grace and intuition, and faith that the hockey gods would at least not work against me, even if they didn’t exactly seem to be helping. Strokes, cancer, heart attacks, job loss, divorce, death—affecting me or mine, out of the blue, a series of dizzying phone calls, each shifting my balance, forcing a play I had not anticipated.

Facing less, others have given up. Others are not hockey players.

Those who play balance on the edge, poised completely in the moment, whatever it happens to be and however unforeseen. They fall, they bounce up. They bleed; they do not care. They never stop moving until they step aside for teammates who have their own next shift to play.

Ernest Hemingway saw this grace under pressure in bullfighting. I see it most perfectly embodied among these ice warriors, who draw blood and spill their own, dodge their opponents or collide with them as the play demands, find balance amid a maelstrom that never stops.

People wonder why that particular Capitals team, after offseason upheaval, made it to the finals where previous, more successful squads fell short. I did not. I had seen them all season flourish through disaster, turn adversity to their advantage, and persevere one period at a time. They stuck to their game. They lived in the moment. They thrived in uncertainty while certain they could handle whatever flew at them.

They believed. We believed. A city shifted.

Chapter 8: Put Up or Shut Up

I had been dreaming of circles: crossovers on the red painted ice, black pucks passed tape to tape, endless laps around the rink to get my conditioning on point for today, connections past and present that got me here, to the 2018 Capitals Alumni Summer Classic on June 26 and the warmups with Team Labre.

​It was at Medstar Capitals Iceplex in Ballston, VA, where the big-league Capitals practice and where I had played my first hockey scrimmage back in 2014 as part of their Learn to Play program. Wearing​ 33 White (my dad’s old basketball number), I continued to loop around the net, taking practice shots, adjusting everything to keep up with men my age or older who had been playing their entire lives at a level I could only imagine until this moment.

I could feel their speed, which existed within and even outside the group, circling around everyone, setting what to me was an unreal tempo unlike anything I had felt before. And then, we shifted to a line and the introductions. I watched the other players intently, nervous that I would do something goofy like trip or fall when I did my little skate forward. It went fine, if not exactly smoothly, and when I drifted back in line, my 5’6” frame created an obvious visual dent on Team Labre.

With all the Stanley Cup fanfare, I had started to wonder if the Capitals Alumni Summer Classic would happen as originally planned. My coach kept pointing out to me that I had to win an auction to be able to play in the game, and I kept responding that would be the least of my worries. I don’t lose auctions, and I didn’t.

But having won, I had to play with men who really knew what they were doing, and the past year had shown I still had a long way to go in my own development. I could have lost the auction and still benefited from the work over the last year. That was always my back up plan.

And, I almost chose that. The closer I got to the game, the more I realized that I was a beginning player with maybe a year and a half of actual hockey experience, and maybe two years of total hockey skating experience. What was I thinking? Was I insane? I am good at denial, so until warmups for the Alumni Game, I had pretty much kept these questions at bay. I tried to distract myself by locating my friends in the stand. My parents couldn’t come because of my dad’s cancer treatments. Other friends watched on the Facebook livestream.

Meeting most of the players the night before at the Cigar and Bourbon Night had given me confidence that they would do their best to make this fun for me and the six other auction winners. That had always been my sense of the alumni who participated in these games, and I was not disappointed when I talked to them. That put me at ease. And off and on since winning the auction on Friday, I had talked with DC Native about what I needed to do as well as to other friends. The consensus was firm: “Just have fun.”

For the first period, that was easier said than done. I had no idea where to be, what to do. I was told I didn’t need my usual water bottle, because they supplied water on the bench, which they did. But I hadn’t bargained on needing to remove my cage to drink this water, so I was fumbling with my cage between shifts when Coach Labre—whose sweater hangs in the Capital One Arena rafters—told me to get out there again.

It took me a minute to realize I was out there without my left glove, a casualty of the water bottle/cage removal situation. Horrified, I wondered what to do—this was the sort of game where you should not be on the ice bare-handed, and I also couldn’t believe that I had done something so dumb. Luckily, or unluckily, I wasn’t the only one who noticed, and I saw my glove dropped to the ice near the bench, where I grabbed it and tried to get back in the game, hoping that I would soon stop being comic relief on the ice.

I have never been happier to hear a buzzer and head to the locker room.

I had been given a separate area to change for the game, but between periods, I was with the team. As I sat down, I was still processing the sheer speed of what had just happened. I was handed a beer. I have never needed one more in my life. I don’t even remember what it was, but I downed it instantly, saying breathlessly between gulps to my benchmate, “You guys are so fast.”

Sylvain Cote smiled. “I used to have six speeds. Now I have three.”

“I would kill for two,” I responded.

The consensus in the room was that things out there were slow. I marveled at the differences in perspective we had. They were relaxed, encouraging, and ready for the next period. I contemplated a second beer and vowed no more gloveless shifts. My mind circling back, “Just have fun.”

Chapter 9: The Shots You Do Take

My skating coach would text me later about the game, saying, “It takes some adjustment.”

He was speaking from experience—and he was right. The first period came at me like a freight train in every way—speed, position, puck management, gear. I started calming down in the second, and by the third, I felt much better about it all.

That doesn’t mean I stopped experiencing mini-disasters. Far from it. I managed to get my stick stuck between Errol Rausse’s legs. “How” and “help” and “don’t lift up” were going through my mind simultaneously as I tried to break free and hoped he hadn’t noticed. He jostled me on the next face-off, called me a “dirty player,” with a wink, and then we were off on the next play. Instead of scowling, I was now laughing, relaxing.

But, I kept running into Mike Knuble. I know I was in the wrong spot—although Knuble would never let me be in the wrong when I asked him about this later. By the third collision, one in which I fell down, the ref flew over to call a penalty. My heart sunk into my stomach. He was giving me a penalty shot.

Now, those of you who play hockey well and actually have a shot might have relished this opportunity. I was not one of those people.

In the long list of skills I did not have or needed to improve, my shot was the most glaring. In normal game situations, I can ignore this issue and focus on other aspects with which I have some ability. The few goals I have managed have all been ugly, rebounds or worse. I suffered no illusions about my goal-scoring abilities. Right now, I needed a miracle or an accident. I didn’t care which.

As the ref set the stage for my worst nightmare, the odds of either happening were extremely limited because I was facing a goalie with whom I regularly played (he also won an auction) and who knew that I had nothing. A line from a Bob Dylan song wafted through my mind: “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.”

Whenever I have watched penalty shots or shootouts, I have always wondered how the players find the focus to shut out the crowd, the players, the situation and do what they needed to do. As a young basketball player, the crowd had often rattled me, especially on free throws, despite my percentage being the best on the team. I could stand on the line and sink them endlessly during a practice. Bring on the crowd during a game, and it was anybody’s guess what would happen.

But here, as I started skating toward the goal, the crowd melted away, the players disappeared, I heard nothing but the air rushing past my ears in my helmet, saw nothing but the goal itself. My thoughts were silence and movement and instinct as I brought my stick against ice and puck.

You may have gathered by now that my participation in this game was the real win, so I don’t really need to tell you that Team Red’s goalie and my friend easily batted my shot away. I also don’t need to tell you that none of my other shots went in either, although by the time the third period rolled around, I was feeling more relaxed and like I had some sense of where to be and what to do.

I didn’t stop smiling. Nearly everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong, and yet you could not wipe that smile from my face. I was having fun.

Chapter 10: Epilogue

“Hockey is beautiful.” That is my response whenever people ask why I started playing this game at a time life-long players are often dialing back their participation.

I played in the Capitals Alumni Summer Classic when I was 47 years old, with about a year and a half of hockey-playing experience and about two years total of skating experience. Everything was new for me, and playing with former professional players gave me an amazing understanding of what the game can really be that was impossible to get in any other way. To a man, the former pros were nothing short of encouraging, and although I wish I had been a better player, they never made me feel the lack—they made me feel a part of things. They even toasted my dad’s health as we exchanged stories after the game.

So why do something that would only go so well and then write about the failure? Simple. I am not done. Getting myself ready to play in the Capitals Alumni Summer Classic was just the beginning of hockey for me and a way to motivate myself to get better. In the intense 11 months leading up to the game, I learned more than I ever thought possible and found opportunities I never expected. Most of the good things in my life right now, including a new job that I love, came about because of my dedication to this greatest of sports. I needed to shake up my life, and this adventure did the trick.

I also did it because I want to see more women get involved in this sport. Had I not seen that lone woman participant in the beer league game that introduced me to hockey, I don’t know if it would have occurred to me to play, regardless of how beautiful I found this sport. I would love to see more girls, women, and others who might not typically consider playing hockey give it a shot. I had no background in or idea of this game until April 2013. If I can do what I did, think what women with more experience and girls who are just starting out can do. I’d love to see women win that auction who can actually play. Hockey is for everybody.

And, finally, I did this because it had been a while since I had been single-minded in my pursuit of a goal. I needed to see if I could follow through on something that was not in any way guaranteed. I didn’t score a goal in the game, but I did play in it. And who knows? Maybe once I have an actual shot, I will win another auction.

What have you wanted to try but have put off? What do you need to do to shake up your life? To quote Ted Leo’s line, which has become something of a mantra, “Do you believe in something beautiful? Then get up and be it.”

P.S.: The auction started Monday and ends Thursday. Good auction spots are still available.

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