One Last Ride: Introduction, Four Years Flies By
The 2019-20 season marks the sixth season of hockey that I've written about and photographed at Adrian College. It's also special too because it marks my senior year of college here at Adrian, where I'll graduate with my bachelor's degree in May.
Over the summer, I decided I wanted to write a book about my journey for not just the past six years that I've spent taking photos and writing blog posts, but about the better part of the last ten or so years of my life that have been consumed by Adrian College Hockey. The final chapter will be about this season, my last ride, if you will, and I've decided to also commemorate it with the occasional blog post as well.
We'll start with the season up until this point, an introduction if you will.
At the start of the season, my friend Gabe Schray, who's in charge of ACTV this year, had one of his student commentators interview me during the intermission of the first MD1 game in September. The first thing he asked was what I did. I laughed and so did Gabe, who knows well all of the various things I find myself doing on a weekly basis for the plethora of teams we have at Adrian. So I explained to him what I do, and we decided to use "photographer" to lead the interview in and then I explained some of what I did for the MD1 team. Then he asked me during the interview why I do what I do, the overwhelming majority of it on a volunteer basis, and I thought for a second and I realized that, while it was totally cheesy, it was for the love of the game, if you will.
You see, hockey is more than a game to those of us who know it well and who have let it overwhelm their lives. It's not just the actual, physical playing of the game on the ice for 60 minutes, it's so much more than that. It's the people you meet along the way that become your family. A team is like a family and there are very few bonds that are like the bond that a team shares. I've been so lucky to find the greatest group of people on my hockey journey that started so many years ago in the stands of Arrington Ice Arena.
Hockey is the people that you'd spend two straight days riding across the country in the car for, even if it meant only getting to watch one last game of the season that didn't end the way that you wanted it to. It's the people you give up your Friday and Saturday nights for just to watch them play on the road, only to get home at 3:00 AM and get up the next day to do it all again.
That, that's what drives me and what's driven me for the past six years.
This year has been funny, when it comes to the general student population, I feel like a grandma. The incoming freshmen are all the same age as my younger brother, Johnny, and suddenly I feel old and like I know nobody. Watching the D3 team is funny too, the majority of the new kids on the team are fresh out of high school and even the freshmen on other teams that came from juniors are now younger than me too. It's hard for me to believe that next season, my brother will be one of those freshmen and playing for Adrian when it seems like just yesterday he was six years old and playing his first game at Arrington Ice Arena in jersey that was three sizes too big and hung to his knees.
The start of the season was bittersweet. I was amped to get things going and to have hockey back, but as the puck dropped on September 26th for the first D1 game of the season and that Saturday when my family and I hit the road for the first roadie of the season, I felt just this twinge of sadness as I realized it was my last first game, my last first road trip with my family and the start of a string of lasts in my senior year.
For the past ten or so years, I've listened to Mr. Van Geison read off each senior's short write up on senior night and every one of them has said that four years flies by and I never really believed them until I found myself in their shoes and starting my senior year.
Four years really does fly by, I've never felt it as much as I do now as I sit here in the cold scorekeeper's box of Arrington Ice Arena and keep score for the men's league game that followed the seventh game of the weekend.
There isn't much we can do to stop time, believe me, if there was, I would've tried it by now. But what I know I can do is soak it all in. The last few years I've found myself thinking how I couldn't wait for the next game the following week or following day during the last period or so of the game I had been watching. This year, I've tried to just soak it in, live in the moment and soak up the time I can spend with my hockey family, whether it's a blowout game against Mercyhurst where the boys rack up 100 shots on goal or an anxiety inducing game where we stay tied 0-0 until less than two minutes left in the game like last weekend against Liberty.
We're 12 games into the season for the MD1 boys and I already can't believe we're nearly halfway through the year and it hurts my heart just a tiny bit and I dread winter break and a month away from everyone and game days just a bit, but my senioritis is certainly looking forward to a month without classes and homework.
This group of seniors is special, I more than likely feel that way because we came in together as freshmen three years ago in August and we've grown up a lot together in these last three years. They were the first class that Coach Astalos brought in too when he came to Adrian and I'd be lying if I didn't say the thought of their senior night in February gets me a bit teary eyed.
But, like I said, nobody smarter than me has figure out how to stop time, so you can find me here, at Arrington Ice Arena, soaking in every minute of every game I have left that I can. And hopefully, come March, you can find me in Dallas, soaking it all in there too until the last buzzer sounds and we hopefully end the season with a win because that's the only way that my mind thinks is fair for this group of guys to go out and the only way I want to go out is when the crowd has left and the ice is cluttered with sticks and gloves. I try not to think too much about that last moment, though, like I said, I'm trying to live in the moment and soak everything in as it happens, but I'd be lying if I said I never thought about it.
Four years flies by, and it feels like it flies by even faster when you've surrounded yourself with a family like no other. Like I said before, hockey isn't just a game, it's the people. Gretzky said it best, the greatest thing about hockey is the people you meet and I couldn't say it better myself and I have the quote on a sign in my room hanging above the pictures I have on my wall from 2018 Nationals and the 2019 playoffs. The past four years and the people that have come into my life during those four years have played such a big role in my life and I can't wait for one last ride with this group of hooligans and their families that have become such a huge part of my life and I hope you'll join me on the ride.