A good sport for all seasons

I looked forward to the championship game for weeks. I was an athlete growing up and I still enjoy physical activity, but much to my husband’s dismay, I have never appreciated the role of spectator in sport.

Admittedly, I would really like to like to watch. I imagine it would be great to share a pastime so enjoyable for my husband and now my boys, but even after a bar mitzvah’s worth of years in marriage, I’ve yet to come around.

So defensively, I wax philosophical, trying to explain my lack of interest, my inability to find a good sport to enjoy watching. How can you root for what is essentially a uniform and rotating people in a stadium?  I “get” watching a game in the last quarter, the bottom of a ninth inning, but to my own frustration, find it near impossible to care from start to finish or season to season.

But to every rule there is an exception. And as it turns out, I am an avid, devoted and entirely attentive hockey fan. My adrenaline races like I am on the court myself.  Heart pounding, I find myself reaching for water to quench parched lips, feel myself sinking to the bleachers in disappointment at a missed opportunity and I cheer too loudly, hooting and roaring with every goal in my team’s favor.

My passion is not for Rangers or Devils, but rather for a locally sponsored field hockey team. Set in the dank, smelly gym of an all-boys yeshiva high school, this is hockey played with an orange ball, not a puck, smacked around by little boys wearing tzitzit under their dress-length jerseys. This junior league floor hockey is played in three periods by the fourth and fifth graders in town.

This year, my fourth grader played a respectable defense all season and the family eagerly anticipated the championship game. Though not a rough and tumble type of boy, our eldest is a natural athlete and we wondered whether hockey would suit him at the start of the season. He quickly became a valuable member of the defensive line.

For the championship, his team would play the undefeated contenders. We knew there would be breathless moments, sweaty helmets, the newly beloved kosher Gatorade and a trophy at the end of the day. But would there be cheer or disappointment?