I wish I was like you, easily amused

I was talking to Andy the other day about his one day roundtrip to Virginia Beach the other day to coach his kid brother’s ice hockey team. Virginia Beach is 200+ miles away and he drove all the way down to coach some kids. I quickly told him he was a moron for driving all the way down for one game, a game that they lost anyway. I mean, there are 40+ games in the CBHL schedule, why make the trek for just one? Then I slowly came to the realization that I would have raised hell had my parents refused to drive me to any of my hockey games, regardless of distance.

This led me to two more realizations: hockey parents make incredible sacrifices for their kids to play and my parents must have been out of their mind during the winter months where my brother and I had ice hockey and my sister had basketball.

Yes, ice hockey is one of the more expensive sports to play. I think my parents paid around $1000 just in dues to Montgomery Hockey or the Blair High School Hockey Club for ice time and all that other overhead stuff. And that was just for the winter. They probably paid in excess of $500 for spring leagues. Then you throw in the equipment, which is not cheap either. My last pair of skates cost $300+, and those aren’t even the most expensive ones. But, the money isn’t really the sacrifice that hockey parents make. It’s their time. Before I was 16, my parents drove me to every practice and every game, often having to go to rinks in Frederick, Laurel, Baltimore, Virginia, and even further. Two to three times a week. For those of you not from the DC area, those are at least 30 minute drives with no traffic. But, practices were usually on weeknights right smack in the middle of rush hour. So, not only did my parents have to drive home from work through traffic, they had to shuttle me to my games and practices. Luckily gas was still in the $1.50 range. I can’t imagine the joy my parents got when I got my license and they no longer had to drive to practices. They still never missed a game though. Oh, and did I mention it was common that we would have 6am practices/games on Saturday and Sunday mornings? So much for sleeping in.

So take that time schedule, multiply it by two, and then add in my sister’s club basketball schedule, which was probably more busy than my hockey schedule. Somehow my parents made it to every game that was humanly possible for them to attend. I’m sure it was a relief when my brother and I started playing on the same team, which cut down the number of games they had to attend in a week by a third.

I want kids when I grow up and I want them to play sports and I want to be at as many games as I can as possible. But realizing what my parents went through timewise just for our sports (oh, and did I mention, me and my brother and sister played just about every organized team sport possible until high school) I’m almost hoping for nerds who like to stay inside all day and do math problems for fun. Almost.