Hockey in Texas

For those of you who have heard me complain about this subject before, I apologize.

Hockey is a sport very near and dear to my heart. Don't get me wrong, I love lots of sports. I love basketball, even though I haven't followed it much since the Stockton-to-Malone days of the Utah Jazz. I do not think this is because I am a fairweather fan. Rather, I think I am SUCH a fan of the Jazz that I get too emotionally involved in their success, and, win or lose, I have trouble dealing with it like a grown-up. I get excited about March Madness in college basketball, but I never follow it

I love college football. I love the action. I get excited about being at a game. I love to watch the rankings come out every week. I love to talk trash about the BCS with my dad. I even enjoy the hearty debates over the Texas teams that are a part of every conversation here in Lubbock from August to December.

I am not a fan of baseball, although I did go to a couple of Mariners' games when I lived in Seattle, and I enjoyed watching Ichiro bat.

I cannot get into soccer as a professional sport, however, I have enjoyed watching guys I know play it in the park.

But hockey. Wow. I love hockey. It's never been a very popular sport in any place I have ever lived--except possibly upstate New York. It started when I saw the Mighty Ducks movies in junior high. Then, when I was in high school, it was the 96-97 Detroit RedWings. And the 97-98 RedWings. I didn't come back to hockey until I was in the last year of graduate school, when I used to go and watch a defenseman I knew play on BYU's team.

Then I moved to Texas.

As I have explained before, football is more than a sport down here. It is a religion. With this kind of fervor, there's not a lot of room for another sport to compete. And, sadly, hockey season overlaps football season from the end of September to bowl season. So the Texas Tech hockey team fits games in when they won't conflict with football home games.

Hockey is sort of funny down here. The Tech hockey team is probably the best in its division in the Big 12 conference. It's world's-tallest-midget syndrome. Last season, they beat all the other teams in their conference by many points. The team they were supposed to play at the end of the regular season bowed out (I believe it was UNLV, which would have been the only way to compare Tech's team to BYU's, as they also play UNLV) and they got Boston College to come out and play them. That's right, an east coast team came all the way down to Lubbock to play the world's tallest midget. Seemed a little suspicious to me. Especially when you consider that Boston College was undefeated when they got to Lubbock, and then somehow mysteriously lost three games in a row. It looked fishy to me. However, the wins against the undefeated-but-playoff-ineligible team were not enough to get them into the playoffs.

So, this year, Tech isn't messing around beating UT and A&M by ten points a game. They are playing serious, semi-professional and Division I teams. And losing. Still, I love hockey. I love the sound of blades on the ice. I love when someone gets checked hard against the boards. I don't love the smell of the players, but you have to appreciate the kind of game that gets you that close to the action. So I go because it's live hockey, which is much better than hockey on TV, which I don't see much of since I don't have cable.

And this week, a miracle happened. Not on par with the 1980 Olympic team's victory over the Soviet Union, but it was still pretty exciting: there was a hockey game on the Monday night when Layne and I were in charge of FHE. So we decided to take the branch. And I was very excited. I had been in contact with several people, including the head coach of the hockey team, trying to negotiate a group rate. Three hours before the game, someone called me to tell me that the game was cancelled because THE ICE DIDN'T FREEZE!

The funniest part about the fact that the ice didn't freeze is that this is the second time it has happened since I have lived in Lubbock. The first time it happened, I laughed as I sat there with Texas hockey fans who assured me that hockey was usually better down here. Two games cancelled because the ice didn't freeze. A game where the opposing team went home before the second game of a series because they got offended at some point during a big loss in the first game. A team and a city council that have been unable to reach a contract for the ice rink. A semi-pro team that collapsed and moved to another city. What's happened?

Hockey, I know we've had our rough times lately, and it hasn't been easy for either of us to be in Lubbock, but I haven't given up on you. Don't give up on me.