The Crosstown Cup was on the line Saturday night. The USC and UCLA hockey teams faced off at Anaheim Ice and the Trojans dominated pretty much as I expected.
It was also Senior Night — the last game of the season.
One of the Trojans players is graduating with a doctorate in education, one kid is getting an MBA and two kids are graduating with a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering.
As scholar-athletes, they’re pretty darn good scholars.
As athletes . . . let’s say that they were somewhat less good than my kid’s 18-and-under roller team from last season. Speed, puck control, rink awareness — all limited at best.
They were a lot better than UCLA though.
The Victory Bell was in attendance. Something I didn’t know is that the Victory Bell is really loud if you’re right next to it. And by “right next to it,” I mean we were 25 feet away and it was deafening.
The fake ID market seems to be booming in Southern California. A lot of underage-looking kids were enjoying a beer at the game.
My wife asked one underage-looking couple, “How do you get beer? You don’t look old enough.”
“Um . . . there is a way to do it,” the girl replied, without providing any further details.
Everything about this post was fine until you compared a roller hockey team to an ice hockey team. For one, roller hockey is an absolute joke in comparison…
Hi Krenos –
I’m glad you liked the post. Here in SoCal, as you probably know, the Anaheim Ducks organization owns the major inline hockey rinks … a lot of kids play both ice and roller, and the good players are good at both. There are NHL players — Bobby Ryan of the Ducks, for example — who played roller growing up. I used to think roller was a weak alternative to ice but now after watching roller for many years, I don’t see it that way at all.
That’s nice, but no.