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.
(AZ Central photo)
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.