The hockey experience

Kasperi Lehtonen, a fourth grader at Yorkshire Academy, loves being on the ice for hockey games.

A stick. A puck. Skates. Just add ice. Hockey. The greatest sport. The speed, wild movement, game intelligence and opponents.

Opponents. They’re all around you. They swarm your view. Then, in the midst of the opponents’ jerseys, your teammate skates free. You pass them the puck; along the ice it swerves. It hits their stick. Right where the tape is. He skates, dekes, shoots, scores. The buzzer sounds.

That buzzer, a loud horn. It indicates goals, and the ends of periods. It’s for the big things. Unlike the whistle. The whistle, a shrill call, it sends chills up my spine. It means the small things, the important small things. It says there’s an icing, penalty, offside, goal, save. It cuts off the game. You crash the net no more.

The net is the goal. It’s what the goalie guards. You keep opponents off your own. The opponents’ net is your target.
It’s where you try to score.

Scoring is the way to win. It’s done with team effort, that’s true. You pass them the puck, they pass back it back to you, you shoot, the goalie moves, and the referee signals that you’ve scored.

The referees, those zebras. They rule the game. They give the penalties, and signal what you did. The coaches yell at them when they make the wrong call.

The coaches get right in your face. They tell you what you did wrong, and tell you what is right. They call timeouts and scream at the referees. They also pull the goalies when we’re losing at the end.

The goalies stop the pucks from going in the net. They need to practice and work hard every day. The coaches throw tennis balls at them in the locker room.

The locker room is where we change. We get our rear in gear. The coaches tell us to dress quickly. We don’t get on the ice if we’re not ready.

You have to be ready to beat the other team. I have to think about what I’ll do on the ice. I love hockey because of what it is and what it makes of you.

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