It’s ridiculous, obviously. I’m walking across a dark college campus with frozen fingers and a scarf pulled up to my nose, not skating under arena lights while a crowd chants my name.
It’s just that I can see exactly what they’re doing wrong.
I don’t mean that in a smug way. It’s just the way my brain works. When you grow up with a head coach for a father, youstop watching hockey the way everyone else does. I can’t sit through a match without automatically tracking the second defender or predicting where the puck will go two passes from now.
Dad used to joke that I watched games like a hawk circling prey. He’d come watch my junior league games and afterwards we’d stand by the boards while he quizzed me like one of his players.
Why did that lane open?
Where should the puck have gone?
But then he’d always ruffle my hair and tell me how proud he was of me.
The path back to our dorm building is dusted with the first thin crust of winter frost, the air stinging the back of my throat. I shove my hands deeper into my coat pockets and try to shake the game out of my head.
Watching the Giants play makes me want to play again so badly it almost hurts.
Which is ironic.
For a town that treats hockey like religion, it’s strange that Blackwood College doesn’t have a women’s team.
They did once.
Back when my dad coached here.
I used to be obsessed with them. I’d sit behind the bench during practices, watching every drill, memorizing their numbers, dreaming about the day I’d skate onto that same ice wearing the jersey myself.
But the decline of the men’s program wasn’t the only thing that happened after Dad died.
Funding got cut and the women’s team disappeared quietly, the way programs do when no one fights hard enough to keepthem alive.
Three years ago, the college shut it down completely.
Which means that now, when I finally attend Blackwood myself, there’s nowhere here for me to play.
People ask the obvious question.
Why not go somewhere else?
Why not choose a college with a proper women’s team?
The answer is complicated.
Losing Dad scattered our family. Markus left for the professional league almost immediately after graduation, chasing the career he’d worked for his whole life. Mom stayed home but seemed to shrink somehow, like grief had hollowed her out.
And me?
I stayed.
Maybe part of me needed to remain close to the place Dad built everything.
Or maybe I just didn’t want to leave Mom alone with the silence.
Either way, here I am.
First-year sports science. And maybe that’s the direction my life is meant to take. Not as a player but still fundamental to a team and to the sport.
The dorm building comes into view, warm light glowing through the windows.
