1st day

My story is about my first ever hockey practice. For the first week of Hockey practices I was in Florida so I missed a lot, which really worried me because I was going to be even more behind then I would have been if I was there for that whole week, but I do not regret going to Florida. It starts off with me calling my friend Kaiden while I was at my house to see what time I had to be there because I did not want to walk in alone. We talk for about 5 minutes about when we are getting there and where I’m going to in the locker room, after our call I leave and I was shaking the whole entire way there, nervous about everything that was going to happen.

I finally arrive to the rink and I wait because Kaiden is not there yet and I 100% did not want to walk in there alone, I wait only about 5 minutes until I see his car pull in next to mine and I started shaking even more. We get out of the car and Kaiden asks me “Why are you shaking so much” I say “Why do you think ? It’s cold, and I’m nervous.”

We go inside and we head to the locker room and the whole entire time I’m hoping that we are the first ones in there so I don’t have to talk to anyone when I first get in there. Thankfully there was no one in the locker room, we put down our stuff and we sit down and I just instantly go on my phone waiting for people to walk in. After about 10 mins someone walks in and he says “Are you Brady” and I say “Yeah” and he asks me “why were you not here the first week” I told him “I was on vacation in Florida.” So we go back to our phones and people start coming in. Some say ‘hi,’ some don’t, finally some people I know start coming in and I am so happy to see familiar faces.

We all talk for about 30 minutes until we are getting ready and I am shaking more then ever now, worried I’m about to do something wrong. But I get all of my stuff on perfectly fine and we head out to wait for the Zamboni to get off the ice. Then the dreaded moment came to where the coach comes out and tells us we can get on the ice.

I step on the ice and I’m so nervous trying not to breath to quick, but I eventually get into the flow of it and I just start having fun until the head coach yells at us to start doing this drill and at this point I have no idea what I am doing. So I go up to one of the other coaches and I ask “what is going on I am so confused” he explains the drill to me and I still have no idea how to do this drill but I get to the back of the line. Sooner then I would have hoped it was my turn, but while I was in line I was watching the other people do this drill and I thought, oh maybe I can do this, but as I was at the front of the line about to go I blanked and I completely forgot what I was doing and I just stop, and this whole entire time I felt alone but at this moment I felt it most I had no clue what I was doing and it was showing and I know everyone else saw it to. After I froze, the head coach blows the whistle and starts yelling and the other coach comes over and tells me “It’s okay don’t listen to him I know you don’t know It’s okay.” And as the head coach is yelling at me the other coach is helping me understand the drill better, and after that drill we moved on and separated into Jv and Varsity and everything went smooth. I got help when I needed it and didn’t get yelled at for not understanding a drill.

“Hockey Action” by Scott Thomas Photography is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.