My son has played organized hockey since the age of 4 & I can honestly tell you we have never had a season quite like this one. Not just the first season I spent in the stands as a parent & not coaching, it was also the first season he didn’t play in the city he lived.
Noah was recruited to play for the Wetaskiwin Icemen, a Junior B team in Central Alberta. There were options to billet with a family in town, but he didn’t want to be away from his family, and mostly his friends. So, we made him a deal that we would drive him to every game and practice for the season. He has a license & a car, but that stretch of hiway in the dead of winter can be nasty. Did I mention Wetaskiwin is a 2 hour & 15 minute drive one way?! Oh, and not to mention, the teams he played were all further north than Wetaskiwin. His team & city was the closest we ever went, as they battled clubs from Stony Plain, Morinville, Fort Saskatchewan etc.
It was awesome! On the drive up he did homework, and on the way home he slept. We would often roll in at 2 am some weekday mornings after a long, sometimes dicey drive home from Edmonton & beyond. All the same to him as he slept peacefully in the back.
This past weekend we made one last trip to Wetaskiwin for the year end awards banquet. A last chance to have some fun with his buddies (he now has a couch to crash on in pretty much every town in Central AB). There was a nice roast beef dinner and they handed out some awards. He was lucky enough to get two: Most Sportsmanlike & Most Dedicated. Dedication indeed, he gave up a lot of time to be on this team and he made sure we didn’t miss a single practice. We figured it out, in just over 6 months we drove 53,000 kms to help chase his dream. I wouldn’t change a thing. It was perfect.
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