We were leading 3-1, en route to a tough win. I say “we”, like all the parents who watch the game from the stands, we who encourage our children, our team.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Semi-final, the other night, at the Camillien-Houde arena. The first half of the game was ours.
Then Saint-Léonard went up the score, refusing to die, admirable relentlessness. A robust match, but with no misconduct on either side, nothing vicious.
In the third, Saint-Léonard took the lead for the first time: 5-4. There were less than ten minutes left.
There I thought, O parent of little faith: the carrots are cooked.
Mr. Tum – Momen Tum by his full name – had deserted our camp: the arena smelled like the smell of flatulence in a small poorly ventilated space.
From the bleachers, I looked at number 23, a little melancholy. Young midget, he is the age when they drop out of hockey.
I said to myself: well, this is the end, this is the end of his hockey years (maybe), this is his last game (no doubt). Who knows if next year he will still want to play? The part-time jobs, the friends, the girlfriend: they are at the age when they develop lives on the margins of those of their parents. Inevitably, often, hockey takes the edge.
I watched our players struggle, this hard core of young people who have been following each other for a few years…
Nathan. Alex. Stefan. Andy. Gabriel. Yan. Children become teenagers before our eyes, we who watch the matches; the pee-wees of yesterday will be, tomorrow, soon, very soon – too quickly – men.
The board showed 5-4. The seconds flew by. I thought: shit, he will never have experienced a final, in his hockey years…
It’s a cliché to say that sport makes children grow. Clichés are true sometimes. But the tension of a finale has something magical about it, which engraves something in itself.
In 2020 we were going to make the final, it was written in the sky. Our bantams burned the league and the heir was one of the main arsonists.
We were literally on our way to Game 1 of the playoffs when the pandemic brought organized hockey to a halt, I believe it was a Friday night.
Earlier this season, our youngsters made a mistake after a particularly eventful match, in the corridor of the arena. Insults to the referees, insults to an arena employee.
Teenagers who behaved in tatas, as humans can be, tatas, especially when they are in a heap.
Who said what to whom? No matter: quick, well done, the league has suspended our entire team, the time to investigate and clear the case.
The adults of the association took the matter seriously, the parents too, our youngsters got the hang of it. The coaches expressed their disgust, did not look for any extenuating circumstances to excuse their players, our young people.
The players, themselves, refused to drop the names of those who had exceeded the limits, in this corridor leading to the locker rooms.
To this day, I don’t know if this solidarity in the form of omerta was admirable or reprehensible.
I just know they went to apologize as a team, pitiful and contrite. And that the apologies have been accepted.
I hope there was a lesson for our young people in that, one of those improbable lessons that sport teaches, beyond sport itself.
I was watching number 23, my son, in the last minutes of the match.
Over the seasons, he was by turns the most pocket of his team, skating on the boot, and he was also the best of his team, scoring in almost every game. He was captain. And he was average.
What has he learned in hockey all these years?
Perseverance, a certain discipline, perhaps. The fact that everyone is important, in a team, the gifted and the less gifted (as in society)? That applying, repeating, training, is what makes us better?
I do not know. The future will tell, will tell him. You never know, at the time.
I just know that all these years, my very serious child in life has always had a huge banana in his face when he was on the ice, match or practice, a sparkling smile that pierced the grille of his helmet.
That smile always told me it was all worth it, en route to a game at 8:45 p.m. on a Tuesday in January, in Pointe-aux-Trembles.
From the bleachers, I watched our coaches. Yan, Nicolas, Jean-Claude. I was thinking about the self-sacrifice it takes to volunteer to coach a team. Hours sacrificed to everything else, family and work, brain juice and elbow juice, training on Friday nights, when half the team doesn’t show up…
I looked at the volunteers of the association, with their coat of the association, their only pay. There is a whole ecosystem of volunteers that allows our young people, whatever the sport, to flourish. They deserve monuments, these people. They run a machine that initiates humans into life, it’s not nothing.
We leveled the score, just before the end of the match: 5-5.
Hope returned to the stands; we, the parents, were feverish – no, more than feverish, at the end of our tethers –, clinging to each other. It felt like an extension…
Then we received a punishment. Shorthanded until the end of the match.
Gulp, heart, close your eyes…
We held on thanks to a goal from Gabriel, number 17: 5-5.
The sudden death ordeal of overtime – four against four – awaited us.
The goalkeepers on both sides made miraculous saves, I think a puck hit the opposing post, and there, Mr. Tum no longer knew where to turn: the two teams gave themselves body and soul in a frankly magnificent effort. It could go one way or the other…
There were, what, three minutes left when my 23 intercepted a shot in our area. He looked up, he spotted Gabriel on the 17th scampering towards the opposing zone…
Release of the 23 from the backhand in the shape of a lob…
Jumping puck in the skates of a defender, who can’t control it…
And who falls hard on the pallet of 17 scampering and who thwarts the last defender…
Escaped.
We all held our breath.
Our 17 made three, four strides crossing the blue line, he took his time to find the gap and, boom, he aimed for the opening above the biscuit of the opposing goalkeeper.
Goal.
6-5.
Pre-Easter Miracle.
Our sons all threw themselves on their guardian, in an abandonment as moving for them as for us.
This season is the end of hockey (maybe).
But our young people will all live a final. Who knows what they will learn about themselves, about life.
You never know, at the time.