As we cruised into the end of the year a lot was going on besides the usual Christmas prep and holiday mayhem at the store. Nick got his acceptance letter to Holy Ghost Prep, a very prestigious Catholic private High School. He was so happy and Lori and I very proud. He was also named Captain of the Upper Moreland Middle school ice hockey team as the team voted him in. Maybe he wasn’t the best player on the team, but it spoke to his character and all around liking by all of the players. He was also voted as one of two players to represent the team at the SHSHL All Star game. This didn’t sit well with Joe since he was the third leading scorer in the whole league as a sixth grader and a Defenseman… Lol. This season was my first as the middle school head coach and as usual it would be a real trip. Luckily, the season would go on break for the holidays so I was able to concentrate on the store. This task was also like coaching a team of sorts. Eight salespeople, three gift wrappers, and hoards of customers, I would have to be more like a quarterback calling out options while listening to every sales pitch going on throughout the store. I would jump from customer to customer, closing one sale and heading over to another if I thought that my employee was losing the deal or I thought that the gift wasn’t the perfect choice for the customer. Twenty five straight days of that is grueling but financially satisfying and necessary for the survival of your business, especially as a Jeweler. We ended up again with a great season and extremely satisfied customers. A team well coached and quarterbacked always wins championships!
That brings us back to our hockey team. A group of young sixth to eighth graders with varying degrees of talent and multiple personalities. My sixth graders were the talented group of club players and Joey one of the only AAA players in the league. His mouth and his skill made him very controversial with all of the competition. In fact, Elementary school kids at Lori’s school in the North Penn district would tell her before our games against North Penn how their older brothers were going to get Joe. Never happened, he always got them…Lol. We finished the season in the middle of the pack but somehow made it to the championship game for the Suburban league title. We would face Archbishop Wood, a team of all eighth graders, in front of about 400 fans. We had lost all three games that we played before against them. Their coach came by our locker room and wished us well before the contest. Nice gesture. I closed the door behind him and said “Alright boys, this is how we beat them tonight!” How…Miracle-esque!
The team followed my instructions to the letter and we were beating them through two periods of play to their chagrin. The bigger and stronger team, Wood came back to lead the game towards the end of the third period. Joey used his chirping skills to gain us a power play with minutes to go and we tied the game up with seconds to spare and end the third period. Our boys were spent by now and I knew that to win the game, I would have to shorten the bench. I asked the eighth graders, our less experienced crew, if they were ok with that. If not, we would continue to roll our lines as usual. They wanted to win though and though they played a great game, agreed to my request. A five minute overtime would be played to determine the league champions. I set up plays for the opening face off and asked our goalie Brett to hang in there a little longer. He stood on his head all game! Joey would control the puck in the defensive zone and get the puck deep into the offensive zone. Play went on for two minutes and we got a face off in their zone. I called a time out to rest my five players that were out on the ice the whole time. I set up a play for the face off when my center Matt said, ” Coach, I’m done”. He was exhausted! I told him to take a drink, follow the plan and give me the best thirty seconds of play he ever had. Guess what? GOOAALL! And guess who scored it? Yep, Matt! As he collapsed, literally crying on the ice, the whole team piled on him in a huge celebration. The other team broke sticks over the boards in disbelief and the fans were cheering wildly. What a great moment for these boys.
Controversy, well of course there was. After the season, I put my request in to coach the JV team next season. No Brainer, right? Wrong. Request denied. Apparantly, I found out that some of the eighth graders thought that I pushed them a little too hard. Well, that was my job. And the Little League incident in the spring, well that was “controversial” too. Oh well, we were putting a bid on a beautiful new house in Doylestown, Nick was moving on to Holy Ghost and Joe kicking ass in AAA for the Little Flyers. Time to move on from UM anyway…for now. Also, another great report on my annual blood test. Nothing tops that.
A quick sidenote… Besides the usual politics and BS that comes with coaching youth sports, the ability to interact, shape and improve the lives of young men and women is priceless. I relished every moment. Take our goalie Brett for instance. His mom took me aside a few years prior to give me a laundry list of health issues Brett had, before I coached him in his first”Learn to play” session. Serious stuff. She was very afraid of him participating in such a rough game but Brett wanted to be a hockey player. She wouldn’t deny him. All that I knew was that if he started flailing his arms, I needed to hang him upside down from the net posts and then get him to the hospital. Whew! Luckily, that only happened once in four years. The summer before the Middle School season, I ran into the family in a Lee’s Hoagie House restaurant. His dad told me that Brett wasn’t sure that he wanted to play hockey anymore. I straightened out that situation with Brett real quick. I was so happy for Brett when we won the championship. He was such a great kid. His mom forwarded me a school project that he did soon thereafter about a person he admired very much. It was beautifully written about “Coach Keenan”. That says it all for me. Thanks, Brett.
Next up: A Bad Break