Beer League--the Locker Room

Once inside Suburban Ice, the local rink, it’s easily recognizable as an ice rink.  First, from the cool temperatures radiated from the ice, even in the summer it’s a nippy sixty degrees.  Second, by the smell of the place; it doesn’t matter where you are in the building with two sheets of ice, the stench of sweat is everywhere.  The smell emanates from the locker rooms, which have barely enough room for twelve or thirteen boys let alone grown men and their gear to sit and change.  The cinder block walls have recently been painted light blue, and look good for cinder blocks.  The old fluorescent lights are tolerable; the floor is soft rubber tiles so the skates don’t get ruined.  Players sit on wooden benches with hooks for their clothing behind them.  Although the room is washed down and sanitized daily, it still has a disgusting odor that will never go away.

I am excited to play hockey and arrive early.  Unfortunately I waited until I was forty three to take up hockey; since my eleven year old son doesn’t play any other sports, this was my only opportunity to coach him.  I leave my two hockey sticks at the battered wooden rack by the door, turn right into the main room and lay my huge bag by my typical seat in the middle of the back wall.  I then head out to the hallway to stretch for while watching a triple A girls’ team finish up practice.  These girls skate twice as fast as anyone on our team and handle the puck like they were born with a stick in their hands; as state champs the past two years they probably were.  I go back in the locker room to change.  I joke with Billy Beer and Bob that we should wait until the girls are out of the building before we get on the ice to risk embarrassment.  As his nickname and gut imply, Billy likes his beer.  Since being laid off by Chrysler at the beginning of the recession, He has played hockey nearly every day, sometimes playing two or three games in a night as a sub. 

I see the team cooler is in the middle of the room next to a large grey garbage can lined with a black plastic bag.  The bag is filled with dozens of the familiar blue Labatt cans.  After our game we’ll add another couple of dozen empties.  This is a beer league and having a good supply of suds is generally more important than winning.  The guys retell the story often of when one our teammates, Randy, forgot the beer on his turn.  They told Randy, who doesn’t even drink, that once they were up by four goals he would have to go out and get beer.  Less than twenty minutes into the game they were up four to zero.  One of the guys on the bench tossed Randy the locker room key on the ice as Randy headed back to the bench after the goal.  In disbelief, Randy picked up the keys, left the rink and came back with two cases just as the game was ending.  It’s amazing what a little motivation will do for a bunch of old guys.

Tonight Randy rolls his half empty hockey bag into the locker room just as the Zamboni goes on the ice.  Like a seven year old Mite going to his first hockey practice, Randy has all his equipment on except his skates and helmet.  He has just played a game in another arena six miles south and has quickly driven to Suburban Ice.  Randy is in his fifties and plays nearly every night of the week, we often theorize his wife signs him up for all these leagues to get him out of the house so that she can carry on an affair or avoid a divorce.  As the butt of many of our jokes Randy just sits there and smiles.

This evening we slowly skate off of the ice worn out and with our heads down. The other team was cheerful and energetic as they shook hands and patted the goalie on the back.  No need to look at the scoreboard to know who won and lost this game.  I’ve been on the wrong end of the score many times before, and although I never like it, I can accept it when we play hard or loose to a better team.  The other team definitely wasn’t more skilled than us; they just worked a little harder going after every puck.  On the first shift I went to the corner to the left of our net thinking I would get an uncontested shot off only to have one of the opposition grab the puck from in front of me.  Afterward I went harder to the puck and got most of them, although usually contested, however many of my Rose Printing teammates never picked up the pace.  As I watched from the beat-up bench while trying to catch my breath and get a drink, it was very apparent that the guys from 5th Avenue Bar & Grille out hustled us.  Chalk this loss up to lack of effort.  What I learned is that I need to give one hundred percent every second I am on the ice.  To do this I need to get in hockey shape, not beer shape; time to start hitting the treadmill and get some additional ice time so I can win the races to the puck.

Back in the locker room the mood was somber.  Several recapped the game and complained how slow we were and our inability to get the puck out of the defensive zone.  Blue Lights were handed out by Chris to most of the players and were downed slowly as we changed.  The air was heavy with sweat and body odor, so much so you wonder why anyone would sit in here longer than they would have to.  Was having a beer with the guys that enjoyable? True to form, the conversation migrated to juvenile insults and jokes.  In many cases they were the same jokes from last week and the week before.  Predictably, we made fun of how odd our goalie Terry is.  By definition anyone that allows rock hard projectiles to come sailing at their head at one hundred and ten miles per hour is a little different.  Terry is nearly as wide as he is tall and fits the mold perfectly yelling at the opposition on and off the ice and whacking offensive players within reach of his stick at every chance he gets.

Billy tosses an empty into the trash and walks over to the cooler for another Blue Light, he offers Randy a Gatorade and the rest of us a beer.  He tosses me one and I pop it open as I sat there listening to stories from thirty years of adult hockey and finally joined a conversation with Bob about work.  Bob is an automotive graphics designer, but with his shoulder length black and grey hair, mustache, and beard, cowboy hat and southern drawl, you would think he just came in from hunting gators.  Bob lives over an hour from the rink and work; since it’s nearly midnight he was going to have a couple more brews and then go into the office and sleep until morning.

The beer was cold, the conversation good and the memory of loss was in the rearview mirror.  Perhaps this is why men long past their athletic prime, men that can barely skate and handle a puck come out week after week to sit in a stinking locker room and drink beer.  I guess it beats sitting on your butt at home or at a bar.  Before everyone had left it was time to get down to serious business, who’s got beer for the next game?