3/12/09

Hello again from the frozen tundra! It was a balmy -4 degrees today in the Twin Cities, prompting many of our team to strongly consider ignoring the early morning alarm clock. It seems like once you get to March, things should be all down hill from there, but then daylight savings time comes along seemingly just to rain on your parade... In any event, we all made it to practice this morning at 8:30 a.m. with remarkable enthusiasm. You see, the end of our season is rapidly approaching, and with only two weeks left before tryouts for the World Championships, we are bent on savoring every frozen early morning moment.

A little background that I didn't cover last time... I graduated from Harvard University last spring. The day of graduation, I promptly packed up my car with my mother in tow, and drove the two and a half days from Boston to Minneapolis. This is a common theme for many of my teammates. Most of us are not originally from Minnesota, so this move has been about much more than just hockey. We are situating ourselves in a new place, several of us out of college and living on our own for the first time. It has been humorous for our more seasoned teammates to observe the infinite void of practical skills that comes with a college diploma. Personally, if you want to talk medieval French poetry, I am your gal, yet I have no idea where the air filter is in my apartment, so I keep telling my landlady that I already checked it and its clean. Is this a big lie? White lie? I'm not sure. Eventually I will ask someone who knows to take a look.

The good news is that there are a number of practically capable women who sit to my left and right in the locker room every day. For example, we have Natalie Darwitz (Eagan, Minn./ University of Minnesota), who knows the ins and outs of car maintenance and will never take any flack from a mechanic trying to pull one over on her because he assumes she is a girl and doesn't know any better. We always bring Natalie with us when the frigid temperatures cause our cars to die (this has happened already five times this year). Then there is Jenny Potter (Edina, Minn./University of Minnesota Duluth). As I like to say, she is a three-time Olympian, and two-time mom. She and her husband, Rob, have two children, Madison (age 8 and Minnesota state swimming champ in her age group as of last Sunday, woot woot!), and Cullen (age 2). As you might imagine, Jenny has her hands full, but also gets the benefit of 16 constantly available sources of entertainment for the kids. They both spend a lot of time in the locker room and on the road, making us smile and giving us license to misbehave.

Jenny is also the source of our self-appointed team name, the "U40s." You see, as in many other sports development programs, there are teams and camps specific to age. For instance, there is an Under-18 National Team as well as an Under-22 National Team, abbreviated to U18, and U22 respectively. At the beginning of the season we joked that we then had to be the U30 team since our players range in age from 22 to 29. However, Jenny spoiled it for all of us by turning 30 in January, so instead of changing the name every year, we just added a decade to save us the paperwork.

Speaking of paperwork, today a few of the U40s ventured out to do a reading program for a local school. We like to stay involved in our adopted community by pitching in, in any way possible. We frequently conduct youth hockey clinics, hospital visits and reading programs to stay in touch and give back the warmth that Minnesota has offered us. Angela Ruggiero (Harper Woods, Mich./Harvard University), Erin Keys (St. Paul, Minn./ The Ohio State University), Kerry Weiland (Palmer Alaska/ University of Wisconsin) and Molly Engstrom (Siren, Wis./University of Wisconsin) all participated in the event. My favorite reading selection was Molly's. She chose, "The Giving Tree, " by Shel Silverstein.

With all of our many events, the week has flown by. We had our last power skating session with our coach Diane Ness, who also coaches local collegiate players as well as numerous players in the National Hockey League. She always forces us outside of our comfort zone (particularly when we are working on conditioning), but she does it with a smile on her face and a great sense of humor. We also had an incredibly successful men's league game, defeating "Summit Elite" by a score of 3-1. This was just the latest result in the second half of our men's league season. We play in the A-division of the men's senior league at the Schwan Super Rink in Blaine, Minn. (also our home rink). The gentlemen were a bit timid at first to allow ladies into their league, but they have warmed to us, and I truly believe they enjoy the competition, more or less so depending on the final score. No one wants to be the guy who got taken to school by a bunch of girls!           

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