THE PRACTICE

I alluded to this earlier, but the ball hockey team I’m on is called Les Boys. It’s not exactly a name that strikes fear into the hearts of our opponents.

Also, it doesn’t look like anyone wants to get custom made jerseys for the team. This is something that I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing before. Usually everyone chips in $20 or so and we get a set of custom made set with our own logo. Each person has their own size, number, and name bar. However, this team doesn’t seem to be “serious” enough to warrant cool threads.

Instead, we’ve been stuck with these God-awful SJC t-shirts from the SJC admin office. In a stroke of genius, they ordered virtually every t-shirt in Large or Xtra-Large. I assume they wanted to prepare for the case that SJC would populated by fucking giants.

So, I got stuck with an Xtra-Large t-shirt as my jersey. The kicker is I have my custom made Whistler Brewing Company ball hockey jersey hanging in my closet. Anyways, this dress t-shirt hangs down to my knees and I look like a child in it. I’m not sure if these things fit anyone on my team.

So, some people got word of our team name and our dress-like t-shirts. Here were just a small sample of the comments:

“You should wear bicycle shorts and cinch the t-shirts with a big belt at the waist… like a big girl’s belt from 80s”

“Yeah, the bicycle shorts are good, but you should twist the loose end of the shirt into a ball at your side… that would look nice”

“Even better, you should take the front end of the t-shirt and loop it through the neck… you know, like how those slutty girls and gay men wear their t-shirts…”

Excellent. We’ll be the most effeminate team in the entire league… including the women’s division.

With that in mind, five of us ventured out to the parkade next to SJC to practice our skills. It was myself, Francois, Aseem, Nic, and Maxime. Tellingly, none of us wore our SJC t-shirts/jersey/dress. I wore my old ball hockey jersey and Nic was in a Russian national team jersey. We didn’t have a net, nor a proper ball hockey ball. We barely found two tennis balls.

We took a few shots at the wall to warm up. I was the only one to have played Bodin Ball Hockey before, so I explained some specific rules (3 second rule, no offsides, no body contact) to everyone there. We then tried a 3 on 2 drill. This was the most fun. We set up a make shift goal for the offensive guys to shoot at. There was a lot of running involved and I think everyone found out how fit there were.

I was leaning on my stick at times, but I think I’ll be quite alright for our first game. Everyone at practice was ok too.

My biggest concern is the lack of involvement from my other “teammates”, the guys that didn’t show up for practice. We have about 10-11 guys on our roster and only five showed up for practice. Assuming we’re the dedicated types, it leaves us with two defensemen and two forwards and one goalie. That’s the minimum you need to field a team, however… that’s with no line changes.

I’ve had the misfortune of playing an entire game without going off, and it’s just about the most painful thing you could consciously decide to do. By the end, you’re just standing in one place, weakly waving at guys as they blow by you.

The rest of my team better be damn serious about showing up. I already think there are a few wankers who live here, I better not be adding to that list.

Our first game is on Sunday (tomorrow). We’re playing a team called Operation Infinite Justice.

Operation Infinite Justice vs. Les Boys

I ask you, who’s the one dropping the soap in this matchup?