Angie Abdou - Home Ice: Reflections of a Reluctant Hockey Mom

Angie Abdou

Have fun! Try hard! That was the coachs rallying cry for every pre-Novice hockey game during my sons first year in the sport. Have fun! Try hard! I love it. The slogan applies to so much in life work, writing, marriage. If you have fun and try hard, the rest often sorts itself out.

I wrote the slogan in red crayon on a torn piece of paper and taped it to the laptop where I spend my days either teaching creative writing students online or pounding out my own stories. The slogan stands as a reminder that, sure, okay, I will likely never make the writers equivalent of the NHL and, yes, I know, I cannot expect a pot of gold at the end of the novelists rainbow. I can, though, enjoy the process. I can take pride in my work. I can always push myself to do better. I can find meaning in the challenge. And those things in and of themselves can be enough. They have to be.

If hockey began and ended with that Have fun! Try hard! philosophy, I would have no reservations about my sons participation in the sport.

At nine years old, Oliver has already played hockey through two years of pre-Novice, one year of Novice, and his first year of Atom. Counting a previous year of skating lessons, five of his winters have been spent at the rink. Each year, the Have fun! Try hard! slogan feels less relevant to our experience of the game. I have arenas full of reservations.

I dont have to spell out whats wrong with hockey. Theres the violence. The threat of spinal and head injuries. The parents. Especially the parents. A league on Vancouver Island has actually banned parents from attending games. The kids play before empty stands, a stroke of brilliance as far as Im concerned. This winter in Marysville, British Columbia, at the coldest rink in North America, I saw two adults two fathers get in a fist fight in the stands at an Atom hockey game. Atoms are nine and ten years old. I watched these men hammer each other in the head, spitting obscenities, as mothers with babies on their hips fled to the closest change rooms to hide, and I thought, What on earth am I doing here?

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But my reservations about hockey might run even deeper than these typical complaints about hockey violence and crazed, delusional hockey parents. I was raised in 1980s Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Home of the WHL Warriors.

Alarm bells are already ringing for Canadian readers. Even before I mention names like Sheldon Kennedy and Theo Fleury. Even before I mention Graham James.

Theo Fleury played for coach Graham James from the age of thirteen, first on the Junior team, the Winnipeg Warriors. When the WHL moved the team to Moose Jaw, Fleury and James moved too. Graham was on me once or twice a week for the next two years, Fleury writes of his coachs assaults. An absolute nightmare every day of my life. Graham James even required Fleury to sleep at his house two nights a week rather than at the family home where hed been billeted. Nobody questioned this arrangement. Nobody tried to put a stop to it. In 2009, more than twenty years later, Fleury published Playing with Fire and filed a criminal complaint against Graham James, who subsequently pled guilty to charges of sexual assault. I dont remember anyone in Moose Jaw expressing surprise.

Theo Fleury and I are nearly the same age, so his nightmare with Graham James happened while I too was a teenager in Moose Jaw. You could often find me and my gravity-defying hair at the local rink. Before games, my friends and I would shimmy into our tightest acid-wash jeans. To get them on, wed lie flat on our backs and hook the tip of a hanger into the zipper tag, suck in our stomachs, hold our breaths, and yank. Thats how we made sure our jeans fit just right. Hockey players were a big deal. It was important to look our best.

My little brother two years younger than Theo also played hockey. My brother, Justin, was a strong and athletic kid, physically mature for his age. Now kids can be drafted at fourteen, but back then there was no Bantam draft. Instead, each team had a protected players list of fifty, which included players of all ages. As soon as my brother turned twelve, the Warriors put him on their protected players list. He was the only Moose Jaw kid listed. The way I remember it is that when my brother turned fourteen, Graham James asked him to practice with the Warriors and play exhibition Junior games as an underage. In Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, deals do not get bigger than this. An invitation to play Junior is a hefty step in the exact direction of the NHL. Every hockey players dream.

The way Ive always told the story, my brother said no. Even today, I can hear Justins fourteen-year-old voice, That Graham James guy creeps me out. No way. Keep me away from him.

I wont say everyone knew. I wont say that even in 1985 nearly twenty-five years before the criminal charges everyone knew. I wont say hockey culture protected Graham James, a pedophile and sex offender who used his power to prey on vulnerable boys. I wont say hockey culture victimized Theo Fleury. On those matters, I will leave readers to draw their own conclusions.

But I will say that even though I was very much on the periphery of these events up in the stands with my impossibly big hair and my impossibly tight jeans these events affected me more deeply than I knew.

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Id been away from the rink for decades and returning with my son felt like a kind of homecoming, though, thankfully, Id returned wearing more comfortable pants.

My husband and I disagreed about whether to allow Ollie to play hockey. Why would we? my husband argued. We live here.

Here is Fernie, British Columbia. Home to a world-class ski resort with lift access just ten minutes from our house. With stunning snow-capped peaks in every direction, Fernie is a recreational dream: downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, snow biking. Who would choose to get on a treacherous winter highway to spend the weekend drinking bad coffee inside a rink?

My husband had a point. My point, though, was that it is not up to us to choose. Our childrens sports are like our childrens marriages: we, the parents, do not get to decide. Ollie picked hockey himself. At four when he first asked to play, we put him in the figure skating clubs learn-to-skate program. I got away with that for two winters. Two afternoons per week he skated for an hour. We spent our weekends at the ski hill, as a family. A few months before he turned six, he told us again, I want to play hockey. When I took him to the rink for the same learn-to-skate program, he turned his serious eyes on me. No, Mom. I mean real hockey.

He begged us to let him play. I thought of my own childhood love for swimming, of everything that sport taught me about passion and goal setting and discipline. Any meaning I have found in life has come from those three things. Passion doesnt come from a parent saying, We live ten minutes from a ski hill: youll ski. Passion comes from inside. We get to have kids, but we do not get to tell them what they like.

Im not sure I won that argument. Ollie does play hockey but I am the one braving the highways every weekend. I am the one sitting at the rink, drinking bad coffee. As long as you love it, I tell my son. If you love it, Ill do this. As soon as you only kind of like it, were done. Were going skiing.