A Blast From the Past and How I Came to Love Hockey

I received something very exciting today!  It is a copy of the March 3, 1980 Sports Illustrated in excellent condition.  What is so exciting about that, you ask?  It is, of course, the issue with the famous cover of the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team’s defeat of the Soviet Union.  One of my closest friend’s husband is a huge sports fan and has quite the collection of baseball cards and other sports memorabilia.  He is also the Head Thief over at Landthieves, an excellent and hilarious blog on University of Oklahoma and Big 12 sports.  His game previews are a must read every week during football season.  Anyway, he was going through a box of old SI’s issues and found this issue.  Knowing my love/obsession of this team, he gave me the copy.  Words cannot express my gratitude. 

 

My love/obsession of hockey started right here.  The first hockey game I ever watched was their game defeating the Soviet Union.  I was 17 and a junior in high school.  I distinctly remember watching the game with my dad and being so overwhelmed by the emotions of the game.  I also remember being overwhelmed by how cute all the players were as well!  I was 17, remember, and just the right age to fall in love with these guys.  Unfortunately, after the Olympics were over there was very little hockey to be watched in Clifton, Texas in 1980. 

Fast forward twenty-seven years to summer 2007.  I had just come through the most difficult year of my life.  In a span of 9 months, I had lost my mother, my job and then my dad.  It had been a difficult few years leading up to that time with my mom having Alzheimers and my dad having several health issues.  We had had to downsize them to a smaller house a couple years before, not an easy task when dealing with an Alzheimers patient.  Then had had to put Mom into the dementia unit of the local nursing home the year before.  My father’s health had continued to deteriorate and we moved him into an assisted living apartment when my mom died.  I had gone back to work part time about six months before my mom died, and loved my job.  I had been there about a year when some changes were made and I was no longer needed.  I was devastated.  Only three months later, my dad had a heart attack, developed pneumonia and died.  I became very depressed, to say the least. 

That summer we were looking for anything we could find that would be uplifting.  We love sports movies and I started looking around for ones we hadn’t seen yet.  That is when we first watched the movie, “Miracle” about the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team.  I was immediately transported back to my living room in 1980.  There I was, 17 again, watching the game with my dad.  I was intrigued with the story and found the book The Boys of Winter.  I read it and re-read it.  Not only did I love the original story but was fascinated by how well most of the players had seemed to weather the storm of fame that followed.  I also found this game of hockey, that he so eloquently described, to be mesmerizing.  I’ve always loved watching skating competitions of all kinds, speed, figure and dance, but had never paid much attention to hockey.  Up until then, most of what I had known of hockey was the 15 seconds of highlights on the evening sports.  Which usually consisted of a couple of goals and a fight or two.  I assumed they were just a bunch of barbarians duking it out on skates.  But this book described something completely different. 

When hockey season began, we decided to watch some Stars games and see what we thought.  I was amazed.  The skill level required was incredible.  I began going on line and reading whatever I could find about the games.  By Christmas I was completely addicted.  We attended our first game in person, the week after Christmas.  It was the 8-3 blowout over the Wild.  Over the rest of the season, we attended several more games, including the final game of the season against San Jose, which cemented my love of Steve Ott.  I began catching practices when I could, being unemployed, you can do that!  We enjoyed seeing our first playoff game and had fun getting rained on at one of the watch parties.  I became familiar with the local Star bloggers and have since met several of them and have become a regular or irregular, in one case, on blogs for other teams.  I have learned so much and still have so much more to learn! 

We went through some more tough times with a possible layoff/move hanging over our heads for six months, but today, our family is doing great and looking forward to starting a new season with our recently purchased hockey sweaters!  I even have a job interview coming up.  Getting into hockey has helped us get through some difficult times by giving us something benign and positive to focus on when reality was not much fun.  Oddly enough, it has brought our family together as we have discussed players and trades, wins and loses, around our dinner table and cheered together in front of the TV or at the AAC.  All and all, it has been an incredible ride which all started with one game in 1980.