Kids Stories

On Monday December 23, 2013 a few of the Board Members of Desert Hockey Development headed over to the Bonsall North Park inline skating court. We were going to be meeting with Ms. Caitlin McGlade, she is a reporter with the Arizona Republic, to discuss the plans we have for the court (click here for story).

Desert Hockey Development had put together an offer to the City of Glendale to adopt the inline hockey court portion of the park through a program called “Partners N Parks”.  Through this partnership, we will spruce up the court and provide to the children of Glendale free sports instruction, a program which the City of Glendale has been unable to provide due to budgetary constraints.

While we were being interviewed by Ms. McGlade and her photographer was busy shooting the scene, a young boy came over to the court along with his dad and uncle.  They stood in the stands and watch while a few of the board members were skating around, hamming it up for the photog.  We asked the boy, who we later discovered was Adrian, if he wanted to play, to take a few shots at the goal.  He did, and I thought “Awesome!” because that is often the way I feel about hockey.

While Adrian was on the court, his dad told me that he loves to play sports, he often plays baseball and basketball, but had never played hockey, never really had even seen it played before.

Before long three, almost four, year old Adrian was running around the surface, stick handling the puck and taking shots on goal, and making them too.   Michael, the photographer took a lot of nice shots of Adrian, and Caitlin was running iPhone video.  I am so grateful for that, because they were able to capture the joy on Adrian’s face as he was playing, and in the video, the last shot was of little, first time with a stick in his hand, Adrian calling out to his dad, ”Hey Dad I did it!”.

That, for me is what this is all about. The pride of accomplishment when the lamp gets light, and I in this case I am being a little selfish, because while it was Adrian’s lamp being lit from his accomplishment, I was the one beaming.

“Lighting the lamp” is a hockey term, it refers to the red light behind the goal that is lit when a goal is scored. Every hockey fan knows what it means and knows it’s a good thing.

Last night around 7, during our “Halloween Candy Hangover Hockey” event at the Glendale rink, I noticed a kid quietly hanging out at the edge of the action. He was five or six, and was watching the inline hockey intently.

“Hey man, do you want to play?”, I asked him.

He didn’t answer, but he also neither ran nor looked away.

I pushed a little, “Do you want to play some hockey? We’ve got a stick for you, it’s no problem.”

He still didn’t answer, but looked ready to give it a shot. We approached him and handed him a too big but as close as we could get stick. Being that he was a little kid, unaccompanied by an adult after dark in a public park, we asked:

“Are your parents here? Do they know where you are?”

“Yes,” he answered to both questions.

His folks were nowhere in sight, but may have been in the area.

We have currently set up shop for our hockey development project in Glendale’s (AZ) Bonsall Park. The park is a common resting place for homeless people in the area. Our kid was wearing worn but warm and mostly clean clothes and wasn’t wearing a “homeless” sign, but it doesn’t really matter where he lives.

So we got him set up with a stick and took him out on the rink between games to take some shots on one of the goalies.

He took three shots on the goalie. Our goalie made two incredible saves, his third shot hit the post.

The fourth shot went in, and that’s when the lamp lit. It wasn’t the goal light, though, it was the kid’s face. He looked like he won a million dollars, maybe two million.

It was time to start the next game, so we made sure to invite him back. We told him to be sure to bring his parents, and we’d see if we could set him up with hockey gear. He pointed at another kid’s skates. “Sure, we’ll see if we can get you some skates,” we told him.

That’s when the lamp lit again.

After the little guy left the rink, he shot the puck around with our youngest son for another half hour or so until our son was due back on the rink. He left without a further word after he put his stick back where it belonged.

I hope we see him again and I hope he brings his folks. I wish we’d gotten his name or at least taken a photo.