I played ball hockey at SJC on Saturday. It was the first time I played since probably July. There’s a new resident who’s running the show now. He sent out an e-mail out a few weeks ago asking if anyone was interested in playing. I replied and told him how we did things way back in the day. I also mentioned that he was free to do whatever he wanted to with hockey now that he was in charge.
He was nice enough to let me play for the first outing of the season. When I showed up, there were only two others guys there who had played at SJC before. It was Penson and some Swiss guy that played twice last year. Not coincidentally, we were also the only three guys who wore gloves.
The others that showed up came in various states of athletic gear. Two guys wore jeans. That kinda reminded me of the time Bone showed up drunk one night and played in his white jeans. The rest wore shorts but no one had shin guards.
There was some spirited competition and we played for nearly two hours straight. I can’t imagine how some of the guys survived the whole two hours without water. I went through nearly a litre of water myself.
Two guys got hit in the eye with the ball but they weren’t serious injuries so they continued to play. That’s the nature of SJC ball hockey. You haven’t lived until you’ve gotten a ball to either the eye or the junk. If that’s true, I lived twice vicariously through my own crotch.
While it was a good two hours of running around, I still think of the golden era of SJC hockey. You know, the days where Phil patrolled that wing along the wall. Joel was always fond of mentioning that. The days where hockey was played twice a week, once on a weekday evening. The days where UBC Parking would come harass us and then we’d have to speak to the RCMP. Oh those heady days.
Anyways, I would like to play again because this is a somewhat convenient venue for me to run around and get sweaty on a regular basis.
Here’s to continued hockey.