Return To The Rink
Good
evening, and welcome back to Streatham High Road, for another week of exciting
hockey action. As the Redhawks look to continue the strong start to the season
against the Oxford City Stars in NIHL 1 action. Oxford will be looking to get
their league campaign going with a strong start after only facing NIHL 2 Norths
Coventry Blaze in challenge matches a few weeks ago.
Before we
begin with this week’s article. I want to just say something. What’s going to
follow is sort of an outpouring of how I feel after 18 months without the sport
I love, and returning to the High Road 2 weeks ago. As the saying goes, you
never know what battles someone else is fighting. And you never know how
someone feels till you’ve walked a day in their shoes. The last 18 months has
been hard on us all, and I don’t want anyone to think what follows is me
putting my own struugles over that of others. I lost hockey for 18 months,
others lost loved ones and their lives. And there are hockey fans who sadly
will never see a puck dropped again because of the pandemic. We live in a time
where we’ve realized so much was taken for granted. And this is my personal
story from the past 18 months, how life without these weekly hockey games felt,
and the impact it had on me as a person. And how I feel, now that hockey’s back
It does
feel good though, to be able to start these with the words, “Welcome, back to
Streatham High Road” every week when I write these articles I rely on the
hockey landscape, my own loudmouth opinions on the sport, and talking points
around the team to come up with something I hope you the readers will enjoy.
But this week, I find myself reflecting upon that sentence “welcome back to
Streatham High Road” and what being able to say it again, means to me, my
mental health, and all of us who have spent 18 months wondering if we’d ever
see a puck dropped again.
I hope
you’ll forgive that this week’s article is going to be, a little self-indulgent
in places. But I hope at the same time I reflect what some have been feeling. And
I hope you will forgive that I’m going to talk about the world of the last 18
months, I know we all want to escape the new cycle were so daily bombarded with
by press briefings and statistical analysis and experts. That these few hours
in the rink should be a sacred haven from such things, but sometimes we have to
talk about things we don’t want to.
As I
write this, I am sipping tea from a mug with the words, “warning may start
talking about hockey” printed on it. This mug served as a warning to all my
colleagues at work that I may unprovoked begin talking about my favourite
sport, or to engage me about it when UK hockey made the headlines, such as when
Petr Cech signed for the NIHL 2 Guildford Phoenix. Or as one colleague learned,
to remind me that my NHL team had lost to a Zamboni driver was not a good idea.
My point here is, I love hockey, and everything that comes with it. And over
the 25 years the sports been in my life. Its become woven in to the very fabric
of my person and my mental health.
The
sports been such a big part of my life that my dad often remarks I studied
hockey not media production at Coventry Uni. This stems from the fact that when
asked if I’d be coming home to visit in the winter months. I would always say I
was either filming games, watching games, or playing for the university team.
My 3 years at Coventry uni I did immerse myself in the sport. I owe my career
in media to it as I learned the skills I use today in those 3 years working
on hockey projects. My first flat was
with a friend I had made attending hockey in Basingstoke. Every year I cleared
my schedule and put friends on notice that from September till April invites to
weekend activities would be met with the response “sorry I have hockey” The
game is for lack of a better term my escape. Its like my version of attending
church every week. And much the same as those who take solace in faith. I take
solace in the escape it allows me. My friends and family know this, so well by
now that they know if I’m dating someone, and I invite them to hockey. Things
must be getting serious. While others dreamed of a Caribbean get away or a trip
to Disney World. I spent my life dreaming of seeing hockey games in all manner
of arenas around the world. That’s how much hockey means to me in my life. In
part it is my life.
18 Months
ago, I packed up my bag, having watched the Redhawks pick up another home win.
The following weekend was due to be the single biggest test of the league
campaign so far. The Solent devils on Saturday, followed by the Chelmsford Chieftains
on Sunday. A 4-point weekend would all but guarantee the team would lift the
league title on home ice two weeks later. But as I left that night there were
questions in the air, Vanya Antonov despite reports of his departure had
remained with the team after news out of China. A storm was brewing, black and
terrible. A storm that would as we all now know, change everything.
When the
announcement was made that hockey was shutting down, at first, I didn’t realize
it would change things for me. After all, I’d gone through many an off season.
Surely this was no different. But over time I realized that I’d begun to feel a
part of me had been taken away from me. Because unlike every April when I said
goodbye for the summer, there was no guarantee there would be a return in
September. Though the clubs did their best to encourage optimism and hope by announcing
rosters. I simply found myself unexcited by the announcements. I looked at
every one with doubt that they would ever happen. My
mental health hadn’t exactly been in good shape going into that March. I’d had
personal life setbacks, I wasn’t feeling satisfied in my career anymore, and I
was trapped in a living situation that was progressively getting worse and
worse. But all through that I’d had an escape, a way out for a few hours a week
at least. Hockey, and not just the game. But everything that came with it, the
found family I made that stretches from here in Southwest London, out to
Swindon, Basingstoke, Coventry and all the way to Canada. I knew I wouldn’t see
those people for a long time, and with the news that the virus was a killer. I
began to worry if I’d see them again ever. Some I only saw at the rinks and had
no contact info for, some were deeply entrenched in my life away from hockey as
well as in it. Either way they all helped me forget the failures of my life
when I was in a rink with them for a few hours. It was like therapy in a way
for me, it was what got me through the week. Knowing the countdown to puck drop
started on Saturday or Sunday and went on till the next week. But with a
countdown now set to infinity, my mind went to a dark and scary place
I found
myself closing off from people, those who follow my twitter will have seen it
became less whimsical and fun stuff about Nerd culture and hockey. And a place
where I daily railed against the government and its handling of things. I was
no longer the guy on the mug my friend got me. The next big blow came when it
was announced by my employers, they were making redundancies, and I had been
selected. My last day, was on a Friday, and I found myself wishing I had the
rink to go to the next day to at least get away from the panic and fear in my
mind. I wished I had one of these articles to write to take my mind off
worrying how I’d pay rent after my severance ran out.
Now I
will say I wasn’t bereft of support mechanisms. My friends and family were
always there for me. But when every phone conversation begins with, how is the
job hunt going it eats away at your sanity. When there was no hockey news to
discuss with my hockey friends, except going over the old stories. I began to
miss the rink even more; I began to miss the escape even more.
Luckily
the story here has a happy ending. A good friend when consoling me one day said
redundancy could be the best thing ever to happen to me. Because every friend
she had who had gone through this, had gone on to do something they loved. And
that friend was absolutely right, it sadly meant moving out of Streatham, but I
now work for an international leader in my field, and in the sector, I always
wanted to be in when I graduated university.
Still
despite the success, I still missed the rink. The EIHL elite series, and the
NHL regular season did something to satiate the need for a live hockey game to
enjoy. But without others around me yelling and shouting, without friends to
laugh with it just wasn’t the same. Twitter enabled some of this, but it was never
constant. At the tournaments close I found myself really missing hockey.
So, I
guess by this point, you are probably asking, Chris what point are you building
to with all this maudlin history? Well, I guess the point is this, I took
hockey being in my life for granted, and when it and everyone that I had in my
life attached via it was taken away I felt like a part if me was gone. And I
was worried it wouldn’t come back
I don’t
know if I’m the only one who felt that way. The last 18 months has shown all of
us different priorities. And the importance maybe of those very things we used
to say no to in favour of attending hockey.
I’m not
ashamed to admit 2 weeks ago, when I walked in the rink, . That I was emotional
(I always have been an emotional soft type) I was happy to be back, but I was
apprehensive as to if I would see the old familiar faces. Would everyone have
come through ok, would anyone be missing. For 18 months I had pondered this.
And I’m happy to say I saw so many of the old familiar faces in the old
familiar places. And as I settled in to my perch at the top of the block to
resume my twitter duties. I felt like I was whole again, for the next 3 hours
the only reminder to me of the last 18 months was the mask over my face. Other
than that, it was just another night at the High Road
But I’m
happy to say, it feels like that part of me is now back, and I hope its back
for a very long time. And I hope if anyone else reading this feels that way
that its back for you to. You see for me hockey’s not just about 22 players
with sticks and a puck. It’s always been about the hockey family that goes with
it. Who I’m so happy to have back in my life (yes that includes the referees)
For now,
hockey, something I took for granted in life is back in mine and all our lives.
And for that I am grateful. Grateful to see all the familiar faces, grateful I
got a game of hockey out of the evening. Grateful I got to see the arrival of
Milique Martelly and Harvey Briggs on the hockey landscape. Grateful that the
countdown clock has restarted, as I type this, I have 5 days to go till its
game day again. Grateful that in a few weeks I’ll be heading off on the road to
Swindon to see a friend and take in a Wildcats game. Grateful that even though
there’s still so much uncertainty in the world, and about the coming months,
that for now there is at least some sort of normalcy to our lives again.
Grateful that tonight we get to see a game of hockey again, and for the time
being an escape from the world outside.
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