I’d been holding my breath for days.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure if Spiderman would make the team he wanted, but it was looking good.
Hockey tryouts.
Year after year we see them through to the bitter end. Final cuts to the “B Team”… sometimes a drop to “House.”
I hate the process.
I’m of the mind that at a particular point… when the top kids are picked and we’re talking about “bubble kids” and “politics” and “flowcharts”… that there are such minor differences between the players and it can turn on a dime on any given night, they should just throw every player’s name in a hat, pick the teams and call it done.
OK… not really.
But it would be far less painful.
We’ve never been a top player. I say “we” because quite frankly, even though you don’t see skates on my feet or a stick in my hands, I’m with him for every stride… every play… every shot… every. single. hit.
It’s a gruelling process.
Night after night of pressing “refresh” on the club website waiting for lists and cuts and further disappointment until the next game where we do it all over again to the very… bitter, miserable, disappointing… end.
But this time it was different. Two years of putting in extra time on the ice with the Nova Scotia Voyageurs, high speed skills including power skating with the ever-positive Graham Burgess and repeatedly taking hundreds of shots night after night… doing what he needed to do to get where he wanted to be… he worked hard and made the team he really wanted.
And for the first time ever… I didn’t have to see the disappointment on his face.
And I can finally breathe.