The Devil Dogs played in the WIHA tournament in Irvine last weekend, losing in the Bantam AA finals to the Reebok Blades. Wild Wing, the Ducks mascot, was there. Two of the Power Players were there too. You can’t see the girl on the right because I’m a bad photographer, but there are better pictures of her here. My son is the taller boy with the crooked sneer he likes to be photographed with. I hope he outgrows that. Someone said to me, “I bet you wish that was you in the photo.” I must be getting old because I hadn’t thought of that. I did get to fist bump the Duck mascot though . . . Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Hockey
Tweets on 2009-03-28
Staccato signals of constant information… # At the rink for WIHA tournament # FIGHT ON! RT @PeteCarroll: First day of spring ball at SC…. Football is back!! Gotta love it! # RT @KathySierra: Dressage Olympian Robert Dover to talented young riders, on focus: “Because U dint have a vision, U created something avg” # Read more →
IHF Champions
Northwood won their IHF final game against El Dorado, the number one seed, 5-2. I saw this team at the beginning of the season and said to my son, “You guys are going to lose every game.” He said, “I think we’re going to go undefeated.” It turns out he was closer to being right than I was . . . Read more →
Tweets on 2009-03-19
Really looking forward 2 my 1st ski lesson this weekend! Wait, WHAT?! http://tinyurl.com/cx97xu # RT @THE_REAL_SHAQ: Best Dunk ever? http://tinyurl.com/d68vr5 # Embracing elegant solutions w/ a philosophy of doing far more w/ much less. # How have U changed the way U perform your work in the last week? http://tinyurl.com/cpuuru # F’ing gerunds… # Dashboard inspiration w/ sparklines: http://tinyurl.com/cdry8t # At the rink for IHF finals # Read more →
Hockey Haiku
Northwood wins 3-2 IHF Finals next week May the best team win Grammatically incorrect — “best” should be “better” — but it’s okay because I’ve got a poetic license! It’s right here in my wallet . . . Read more →
Situational Avoidance
My son’s got a hockey game tonight. His mom is going to bring him to the game; I’m going to bring the hockey gear and meet them there. There’s a risk when we do it that way that the boy gets there and isn’t able to play because I don’t show up with his equipment, but that’s never actually happened. In fact, I’m almost always there first. In spite of that fact, he says to me this morning, “Get there early tonight so we don’t have a situation like last week.” I say, “We didn’t have a ‘situation’ last week. I got there exactly the same time you did.” “Just get there early,” he says. Read more →
Outside the Lines
It’s the last high school roller hockey game of the regular season. One of the kids’ dads shows up for the first time and asks questions like, “Do they win most of their games?” Do they win most of their games?! Are you kidding?! You should know that. Even if you don’t come to the games, you could ask your kid when he gets home. Another dad has a great answer. “Come over here,” he says. “I want to introduce you to your son.” Over on the moms’ side of the bleachers, they’re talking about financial matters. One woman is sad because they bought their house at the peak of the market and they’re financially stuck in it for the foreseeable future. Another woman almost cries describing how 14 years of contributions to her husband’s 401k have been totally wiped out. Meanwhile on the rink, Northwood dominates Capo Valley pretty… Read more →
The Facebook Comment I Didn’t Write
Here’s the status update I did post: Paul is shoehorning the limitlessness of life through the limitations of the present… A woman whose son plays on a roller hockey team with my son posted the following comment: Wow. That’s actually pretty profound & it took me a few seconds to process that! 🙂 And here’s the comment I didn’t write in response: That’s why I bring a book to hockey tournaments, so I don’t have to spend the time between games trying to talk to people who’d always be 5 seconds behind me. Read more →
Hockey Moms on the Road
My 15-year-old son and I were at the Embassy Suites happy hour having drinks (me) and snacks (him) with some of the other hockey parents and kids. One of the hockey moms was a really-hot-for-a-45-year-old redhead whose son plays for another team. “I haven’t seen your son in a while,” she whispered to me. “He looks so different.” “Yeah, he’s a lot taller,” I said. “Not just taller. He’s a gorgeous young man.” “Oh. Thanks.” She spent the next hour chatting him up, asking him about features on her iPhone, and so on . . . “Because she was drunk,” the boy said later. She was kinda drunk, but that wasn’t the only thing going on. Her husband was sitting a couple of chairs away the whole time, surfing the web on his Blackberry, and never even looked in her direction. I was talking to my son’s hockey coach… Read more →
Winternationals – Day 3
The Devil Dogs lost to the Quakes 1-0 in the semifinals. It was a great game all the way. The Quakes goalie made three or four unbelievable saves, including one in the last minute where a shot deflected off someone’s stick or skate right into his glove, instead of three inches higher and into the net. We’re going to check out now, save an extra night at the hotel, and head for home . . . Update: The Quakes beat the West Coast Warriors, a British Columbia team, 3-1 in the final. Read more →
Winternationals – Day 2
Round robin games are over. The Devil Dogs — my son’s team — are in the Bantam Gold semifinals tomorrow morning. If they win, they’ll play in the finals at 1 p.m. Unfortunately, they’re playing the Silicon Valley Quakes Black, the only team that beat them in the round robin. You’d have to say that the Quakes are the better team. They’re faster and they attack every second — even on defense. The Devil Dogs weren’t ready for them in the round robin game. They fell behind 3-0, but came back to lose by only 4-3. If the teams played 10 times, the Quakes would probably win 7 of them — but the Dogs still have a chance in a one-game do-or-die. Read more →
NFL Week 17 Recap: You Can’t Win With Knuckleheads
My son is 15, he’s played competitive roller hockey for a number of years — including winning a 12-and-under national championship — and the main thing I’ve learned in that time is that a player’s individual skills are not nearly as important as his ability to play as part of a team. We know lots of kids with terrific skills but if they just want to do their own thing out there, you put them on a team and they actually make the team worse. Or to put it in a nutshell: You can’t win with knuckleheads. I was reminded of that last weekend as I watched Dallas, with talented knuckleheads like Terrell Owens and Pacman Jones, get knocked out of the playoffs with a 44-6 loss to the Eagles, who cut Owens in 2005, and the Jets, who cut Chad Pennington to make room for drama queen Brett Favre,… Read more →
Pond Hockey
“I wish I could go back and be eight years old again for a couple days . . .” Read more →
EppsNet Snack Bar Reviews: Planet Hockey
For some reason, they’ve stopped selling the chicken teriyaki bowls that used to be the highlight of my visits to this West Covina rink. I asked the woman at the counter about it and she couldn’t explain it. She was as dumbfounded as I was. I noticed that the new sausage, egg and cheese muffins were selling like hotcakes so I decided to try one of those. (Ironically, they have hotcakes on the menu and those weren’t selling at all.) The muffins were delicious — prepared fresh, not like the heat-lamped ones you get at a fast-food place — which sort of made up for the inexplicable discontinuation of the teriyaki bowls. Unfortunately, the soft pretzels were small and overcooked, and I had to deduct a star for that. Rating: Two stars (out of five). Read more →
Thinking About It
My son is stick-handling a hockey ball on the hardwood floor in the family room, when I notice a skate wrench lying on the table. I say, “Why don’t you put that skate wrench in your hockey bag?” “Okay,” he says. “Why don’t you do it now, while you’re thinking about it?” “Okay,” he says. A couple minutes later, when he’s still stick-handling and the wrench is still lying there, I say, “While you’re thinking about it, why don’t you put that skate wrench in your hockey bag?” “Okay,” he says. “That’s the third time you’ve said okay, and the wrench is still there.” “I’m still thinking about it.” Read more →
Hockey Moms vs. Soccer Moms
Hockey moms are pit bulls with lipstick. Soccer moms are cat burglars . . . Read more →
Mommy’s Water
Roller hockey season is starting up again . . . I don’t know why but I was thinking about one of the moms from last year’s team — she brought bottles of water to the tournaments, some filled with actual water for her kid, and some filled with vodka for herself. To the untrained eye, they looked identical. I think she may have filled the vodka bottles to a little less than capacity so she could tell them apart. More than once I heard her saying, “Not that one, honey. That’s Mommy’s water.” Read more →
Sarah Palin
As Warner Baxter said to Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street: You’re going out there a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star! Finally, a breath of fresh Alaskan air! Not yet another Ivy League lawyer, yet another warmed-over political hack, yet another condescending, posturing, preening, pandering, pontificating blowhard who’s lost sight of the fact that politicians are employees. We hire them, we pay them, we give them trillions of dollars to spend any way they want to . . . if we didn’t hold them to such ridiculously low standards of accountability, it might be easier to remember who works for whom. And hockey moms are hot! Why? Because hockey’s an expensive sport, so hockey dads have to knock down a pretty good income, which in our materialistic society allows them to be more selective in the spouse department. My wife is sort of a hockey mom, in… Read more →
Hockey Practice
I was watching my son’s roller hockey practice last weekend . . . during a scrimmage, he skated the puck up the rink, faked the goalie to the right, then snapped a shot into the top left corner of the net. “Oh my gosh!” I yelled to anyone within earshot. “Just like I taught him!” A few minutes later, he got a pass in front of the net and one-timed it so high and hard that if not for the protective netting around the top of the rink, I don’t know where it would have come down. “I didn’t teach him that,” I said. Read more →
The Conversationalist
As I’m driving my son home from hockey practice, I start the conversation by saying, “So . . . looked like a good practice.” Silence . . . “I said, ‘Looked like a good practice.’” “That wasn’t a question,” the boy replies. Read more →