Late august had arrived that meant only one thing, training camp was here. Time to get out the hockey gear; skates, pads, under armor, helmet, and mouth guard, everything that had been packed away during the summer was all packed in the large travel duffels. Ready to be packed in the bottom of the bus and shipped to abandon cities in the middle of no where along with there owner. Spokane, Washington; close to Canada but not close to home for most of the young punks that came down to try out, and hoped to make the 2009-2010 hockey team.
Many of the boys were 16-17 years old, some 20 year olds that were returning for another year. By the looks of the boys as the hopped off the bus no one would ever consider them to be hockey players. The beer belly gut was a common appearance, unshaven with beards that could practically reach the ground, two of the men had to pick up their beards so that they did not trip over them as the climbed off the bus, body odor was one of those stenches that could be smelt all the way down in Texas, even when they tried to hide the smell with cologne that smelt like it was made from fish oil. None of the boys cared about anyone else except for themselves, “have to be first” was the only mind set that the boys had.
The boys were introduced to the locker room, each given a locker to place their things while they were at camp. Getting dressed down wasn’t a problem for the guys, they wanted to show off all there muscles, “check out my guns” said one “yea, well my fist will meet your face on the ice!” said another. They never really could come up with good come backs or intelligent statements, but hey they had the body and looks so nothing really mattered to them. The older guys would laugh at the young kids who though they were such a big deal and then gave them there own comment of intelligence, which usually shut the young rookies up. Once the guys were suited they would head to the ice warm up, stretch and be ready to show off their skills. A five grouped hockey staff in control of 40 uncontrollable, undisciplined, and inexperienced group of teenagers. Not the best idea that was ever planned. “We are going to have a scrimmage, make four teams of ten each.” said coach. “Uhhh? Four teams of ten? I don’t know how to count that high coach.” “Yeah me neither!” “I only can count to six, 5 players and 1 goalie.” Making a team that was going to be winning and working well together was going to be a lot harder then the coaches thought. After the four scrimmage teams were made, team pink, team purple, team gold, and team green the first game began. Team pink versus team green, well green was being rude to team pink and making fun of their jersey colors which hurt team pinks feelings so two of the players started to cry. The two boys threw a fit! Fell on to the ice and began swinging their arms and kicking their feet, yelling and telling the coaches that the other team was making fun of them. Since the coaches could not believe that 17 year old boys were acting like this and they just stood in shock, the players from team pink all found a player on team green and began to punch them and fight the guys, even if they did not say anything or did not want to be involved. With all the testosterone going on the ice, the boys on the bench wanted to hit someone too. So team purple went after team gold. Forty out of control boys punching each other for no apparent reason, the coaches then got frustrated and started throwing clipboards and yelling but rather then breaking up the fight they just started throwing punches at each other! It was a mess and by the time the owners of the team came down and stopped all the madness, the damage count was at 3 broken clipboards, 18 missing teeth, 4 broken noses, 2 broken hands, 8 black eyes, and a ridiculous amount of bloody lips. Nobody could talk the owner just stared at the players and coaches and they stared back. “AHH HAHAHAHAHA! You are quiet a rowdy group. I like tough kids, don’t take nothing from nobody.” That was all the owner said and then he walked up to his press box and that was that. “What do we do now?” said one of the players. No one really knew, after a 10 minute period of just standing around the coaches decided to clean the mess on the ice and called it a practice. The boys went home, they were still unsure of what was happening. “Meet back here, on the ice, tomorrow 10 am sharp,” was the last thing coach said. Another practice another day, no telling what was going to happen.