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Friday, February 3, 2006
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Hockey mom If it's Friday this must be Fergus Falls By SHEILA HELMBERGER Staff Writer I can pinpoint the exact moment it started.
My relationship with hockey and the ensuing whirlwind that is now in its seventh year.
We were at hockey registration night at Brainerd High School to sign up my 4-year-old son who thought it sounded like a fun thing to try. The plan was to dabble in it that first winter, see if he even liked it. That was the plan. Both of my daughters were there, too, sitting at the cafeteria table with us fidgeting while we filled out his forms and read over the sheets on necessary equipment and required fund-raisers.
That's when it happened. Our oldest daughter looked over at my husband, eyes wide, tugged at his sleeve, and said, "Can I play, too?"
They did play that first year. Two of the three dabbled. Mostly they spent the time learning how to skate forward, then backward, and then, even harder, how to stop. By midseason my younger daughter had already logged enough time as a spectator to declare that the next year she, too, would be joining the team.
Since that day in the high school cafeteria our winters have never been the same. We have watched hundreds of games and logged thousands of miles on our automobiles. They have won big games that clinched titles, taking us as far as the state tournament one year as a girls' 14-and-under team. And they have lost games that have broken their hearts.
We have traveled the state from border to border, Moorhead to Duluth, sometimes more than once in one season, trekking the four hours to Roseau and Warroad, where we toured the Christian Brothers hockey stick plant one time.
We have a suitcase that we never even bother to put back in the closet from October to March because, surely, some combination of the five of us will be hitting the road for at least one night a weekend. In the beginning we all traveled together. Now we assess the schedule, draw our straws, and divide and conquer, to come back together and recap on Sunday nights. We had a weekend recently with eight games in three days.
Hockey families can do anything.
I grew up on the Iron Range, and although the popularity of hockey couldn't be denied (especially in those early '80s when I was in high school ... that one Olympic year), our school was too small for a team. My knowledge of the game was nil. I never even visited the Hockey Hall of Fame, which was seven miles from the house I grew up in, until I took my husband home to meet my parents. It was his idea. My grasp of the game is still not what it could be. It took graph paper and all three of my kids to explain what exactly offsides is, and it wasn't that long ago.
It has been a slow transformation. It's happened a little each year, but this year I'm no longer in denial. My name is Sheila Helmberger and I'm a hockey mom. I noticed recently that most of my clothes in my closet, especially sweatshirts, declare my loyalty to the teams we play on or have played on. I have a collection of pins and buttons bestowed upon me at various tournaments that identify which players belong to me, and our refrigerator is decorated with the magnets I've purchased with team pictures since the early days.
Last winter when my girlfriends were buying cute feminine blouses for the holiday parties, I exclaimed with glee when I found a pair of jeans lined with fleece that actually sparked my motto for this hockey season, "Fleece is my friend." Sure, they add two sizes from hip to hip that I cannot afford, but something has to give.
I know an anti-hockey argument is the investment it takes to play the game. I can argue that one to my savings account and back. We've done soccer, we've taken piano lessons (buying a piano to enhance the experience), we've done figure skating, we have close friends in dance and I already did the math on what it cost us to get all three of my kids their junior black belts in Tae Kwon Do.
We've done a lot of things, and wouldn't take back any of it, but none of it was free. We do have an advantage in that when we invest in equipment at our house, we can pass it on down to the next kid till the threads are showing and then lots of times we head to the repair shop, give it new life and pass it on some more.
We talk about chucking it all in; we talk about what it might be like to snowmobile, ice fish or ski on a weekend. What it might be like to buy a TV Guide and wonder what's on television on a Saturday afternoon. But each year we return to sign-ups.
A funny thing has happened on our journeys throughout the state, caravanning in snowstorms and meeting at arenas at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning when a curling iron has yet to see my hair. We have made good friends. The type of friends who have blackmail material, because they've seen us before our morning coffee and probably have pictures somewhere to prove it. Friends we can do potluck with for dinner and then sit up, playing dice and card games until the early morning hours.
We have seen one another's children at their best, and at their worst, and we've cheered them all on, no matter what, crawling home on a Sunday night to a day's worth of laundry and our own beds.
Any hockey parent at the arena can tell you the best and worst concession stands in the state, and rattle off a comprehensive list of the coldest and warmest hockey arenas (Little Falls and Long Prairie on the chilly end, the MAC in St. Cloud and the National Hockey Center almost T-shirt worthy).
The Brainerd Area Civic Center doesn't get the credit it deserves. It actually serves as a type of community center for our town that nobody really notices. At any given hour on a Saturday or Sunday there's a game (or two) going on, and often it's tournament action with teams from throughout the state. Before my kids and their friends check out the movie listings, they'll stop by the arena and check out the schedule there.
Hockey.
Who knew it would become such a part of my life? That I would feel so proud to see this girls' hockey program grow from one team of girls from 8 to 15 years old that first year to three teams of different ages at Brainerd Amateur Hockey Association and a roster full of girls at the high school? That stocking up on little things like travel-size shampoos and carting around big things like hockey bags the size of a small state would become daily considerations? That I would someday shop for fashions in the ice fishing department of the sporting goods store and that we would make such incredible memories with our children?
Yes, who knew?
Other hockey parents.
SHEILA HELMBERGER, staff writer, can be reached at sheila.helmberger@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5886.
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