How I Became a Goalie

This is kind of a preface to the next game post, which is way overdue, but oh well. It’ll be posted soon!

When I moved back from Columbus in 2001, I looked for a specific coach who, back in 1995 when I first joined the Tigers and learned how to skate, worked with our then goalie. During my tenure with the Tigers at the time, we only played one game — a scrimmage against 14-year-old boys; don’t ask me what the outcome was — I honestly don’t remember. Anyway, I found him coaching his own team, and he invited me to a practice, after which he told me everything I was doing was wrong.

Well, no one ever taught me how to play in net! I mean, when I played club at Ohio State it was because no one else wanted to do it — I was originally a right winger! I was the goalie for the second half of the ’99 - ’00 season and the first half of the ’00 - ’01 season and started with the club’s equipment, which of course didn’t fit. (I used credit cards to gradually purchase equipment that did fit.) We didn’t have a goalie coach, and our coaches knew very little about coaching goalies. I was simply told to place my body in front of the puck. I ended up quitting due to severe depression; I mean, even my pdoc in Columbus was afraid I wouldn’t graduate! That’s how bad it was! I had to make my studies a priority.

So anyway, that coach asked me a series of questions, and I guess I answered them wrong — I may have said something about how I preferred to score goals or something. That’s when he decided, and these were his very words, that I didn’t deserve to be a goalie.

After that conversation I didn’t put on a pair of skates again until February of 2006 (see “Skate”); not necessarily because of his remark, well, partially, but mainly because of an even more severe depression — one from which I still suffer, and is why I have maintenance ECT. When I re-joined the Tigers last season, I really thought I’d skate up — I mean, I did in that one game I played in during the 2006 Spring Mixer (see “Getting a Life”) — until about the last minute. It wasn’t even so much that I wanted to play in net, but the Orange team didn’t have a full-time goalie, I figured that I wouldn’t get very much back from Play It Again Sports for my goalie equipment, and that the dues would be cheaper. Seriously.

I did skate up in one game last year (see “Game 4, 06 - 07: Tigers Orange 3, the Vixens 3″), and I questioned myself as to whether or not I should remain a goalie. Even our coach encouraged me to do both, and at the time I felt that I was a better forward, and it was all so confusing. But after this recent game (see “Week 7a: Purple vs. the Turtles”) in which I skated up, I know that I’m a better goalie now. Yeah, I still have tons to learn and work on, but I’m definitely better in net than skating up. So really, I count last year as being my first “real” year as a goalie. Funny where life takes us.