SPEAK
WELCOME TO THE SUCK
Hockey: I'm not any good, but I love to play.
Mivert Vierhaller sits in the locker room in his uniform after a game. Vierhaller's team took the ice on Monday, Jan. 29.
by Mark Vierthaler
From the first hit, you're hooked.
The stale, musky smell of sweat disappears and the only sound you hear is your heart in your ears.
The ends of your nerves have been stretched and electrified. Swat peas down your face and burns you until they are red pimples from behind from a bourgeon below.
It's hockey.Welcome to the suck.
Often considered the bastard child of the sports world, hockey has long been relegated to off-handed jokes about missing teeth between football and basketball plays.
But never before have you seen a set of athletics so dedicated to their craft, even if their craft means the occasional hintage to the occasional heart of "Blood on the ice."
There's a culture that
comes with the hockey lifestyle. For years I had watched college and professional hockey, trying to catch the adrenaline rush of the lads. I loved music, television, and television doesn't do the sport justice.
So, I figured, why not try out? The University has had an ice hockey club team in some incarnation or another sport, so why not teach myself how to skate and go out for the team?
Cut to one year later and a 200-pound right barreling down wrist sleeves. Out of pure luck, I get my shoulder down and slam into him. I send him reeling back into the game and I've tasted the game.
It's a lucky bit. Not five minutes later. I'm body checked, stick checked, stick checked. A stick full-black into a stick full-blast into my
stomach, under my pads.
There is an infinity between the first moment of contact and the time you hit the air. The lungs compress and the ribs expand into a thousand cells of confusion. The head whips back the skates fly out from beneath you, and you're in the air.
Then your heart speed up and your body makes hard unmistakable contact with the ice. Sometimes you're back up before you feel pain from the ice. Sometimes you're halfway down the ice before your legs go out from under you and your taste frozen water.
That night my body took its revenge for the sudden change of lifestyle. True, I may have run cross country in high school and competed in triathlons, but nothing can prepare the body for hockey.
Looking at my naked
reflection. I take an inventory of the war wounds. There still a small trickle of blood running from my stomach where I was spared A.
EVERY MUSCLE FIBER
IS SCREAMING IN
EXHAUSTION.
THE THING IS; I SUCK
AT THE GAME.
random stick check to
my back has darkened
to a purple bruise Every
week I am screaming
in exhaustion.
The thing is: I suck at the game.
A guy from southwest Kansas cannot jump into ice hockey and expect to keep up with guys who we played for years. But I made the team.
I'm terrible, but I love the game. No, it's more than love.
To play hockey is to be obsessed with hockey.
From the moment you
wake up to the moment you sleep. hockey is at the back of your mind. it's shard of metal that can never be tweezed. You watch the game on television. you listen to it. You play a video game at least six different Web sites bookmarked on your computer.
There are lads on the University's team who have sacrificed grades, scholarships, relationships and jobs simply for the sake of years of glory on the ice.
Every time you sneak a quick backshot shot over the goalie's mit, for that split second you Bobby On You Gorie Howe you Wane Gertkry.
The day-old pizza stench of sweat is our badge of honor. The metallic taste of blood is the nectar we take our nourishment from.
There's an acceptance you find in players of the game Evan someone so.
lacking in skill as myself is brought into the fold. You sit around the living room, drinking cheap beverage from 32-ounce soda cups. You rampage under the cover of night. You're a brotherhood.
I'm a senior and I waited until my last year in school before I tried to graduate there a good chance I may never feel the blade of my skate cut through the ice. I may never again know how to hit it, but hitting the puck hard it vibrates my arm.
But every time I watch someone take the ice, from now and until I吊 my sweater up for the last time, my muscles will flex, my eyes will dart and for one more twist of the ice facing down five animals with murder in their eyes.
And so will my
02. 01.2007 JAYPLAY < 15