Mothers on Ice

“No way,” I laughed. “Forget it!”

This was my initial response when Roy Lepla, manager of my son’s team, The Livingston Hockey Club, asked me to participate in an exhibition game against mothers of the Ville Emard Hurricanes, a Canadian team our sons had traditionally competed against for years. For the first time, the Ville Emard mothers were challenging the Livingston, New Jersey mothers to a game.

“You don’t have to be good at it,” Roy begged.      “You just have to know how to skate. You can skate, can’t you?”

“I can skate,” I explained, “but any distractions, like other humans on the ice, could prove disastrous.”

“But Laverne, he pleaded, “nearly all the mothers have agreed to give it a try and only a few actually skate well.”

I remained unconvinced.

He pointed out that two of the mothers hadn’t skated in ten years; one had never skated without the support of somebody’s elbow; one could only skate clockwise; another couldn’t skate without organ music, and nobody knew how to stop – intentionally.

He was right. I qualified.

It took longer than anticipated to round up and establish a team. By the time we actually got organized we were left with only enough time for four practice sessions.

“Practice,” according to Webster, is a “systematic exercise for proficiency.” By definition, we were suppose to be refining existing skills. The flaw was that as a team, we had none.

Our first practice was spent learning the game and it’s rules. It was one thing to sit in the stands and judge our sons’ performances and quite another to be playing. We vowed unanimously to never again criticize our sons efforts or proficiency.

At our second practice we reviewed the basic fundamentals …. how to remain vertical, how to fall without breaking bones and, how to get up before the end of any given period.

The third and fourth sessions consisted primarily of exercises and scrimmages. We skated in large circles, in small circles, clockwise and counter clockwise. We took shots on goal, practiced handling the stick and passing the puck until I could, quite literally, stand no more. The only pleasure I experienced during these sessions came from the encouraging cheers and whistles of the New Jersey Golden Blades Hockey Team, who practiced immediately before us and hung around for a few laughs.

We had worked as hard as we could. While several capable individuals actually emerged from all of this, as a team we ranked poorly.

The big night was here. I had been to the West Orange South Mountain Arena a hundred times but I’d never seen the parking lot this packed. Juggling the cumbersome hockey equipment under my arms, in both hands and from my teeth, I backed in through the swinging doors of the huge arena and was not prepared for what I saw.

In past years Livingston vs. Hurricane hockey games had drawn substantial crowds, but they in no way compared to the mind boggling crowd of over 4,000 that filled every corner of the arena that night.

I was overcome with an urge to escape. What had I gotten myself into? Was I really prepared to make a complete fool of myself? People had come here from several counties, as a direct result of some terrific publicity in which promised great entertainment.

The only other time I experienced such intense feelings of fright and helplessness was when I waddled up the ominous steps of Newark Beth Israel hospital, in labor with my first child.   Pausing only long enough to allow a pain to subside I had said to my husband, “Please take me home, honey. I’ve changed my mind.”

Locker room antics were a show in itself. Most of us had not caught on to the knack of putting on layers of unwieldy clothing and protective equipment. Someone would invariably put on stockings and skates and then remember that shin guards should have gone on first; or shirts, suspenders and pants were inadvertently put on before shoulder pads.

For some reason, husbands and boyfriends felt it was their right to be beside their loved ones at this time, so modesty was temporarily disregarded as men’s smiles and flashbulbs lit up the locker room.

At the start of the game we were informed the Canadian team was short a couple of players so we made the grand gesture of handing over two of our best (everything’s relative). Still finding themselves without a goalie, we were  dumfounded as we watched them drag a Canadian spectator from the bleachers and positioned her, without skates, in front of their net. They apparently knew what we only suspected: she was never going to see action, so why bother with skates.

We soon realized that the Canadian goalie was nothing more than a figure head. The only activity she saw was between periods when her teammates lifted her by her elbows, carried her across the ice, and deposited her in front of the opposite net. I remember thinking that she should have brought knitting with her.

We slipped, we fell, we overshot goals, and we misplaced the puck; all the while struggling to maintain a semblance of dignity. The only thing that kept us going was the thought that it was the spirit that counted, and this was a wonderful way of further bonding Canadian-American relations. But, the bottom line was that they looked professional and we looked ridiculous.

To our amazement the audience loved it. They cheered, whistled, squealed with delight and applauded every second of play. We suspected that they thought many of the antics they were witnessing were part of a well rehearsed act, ala Harlem Globtrotters.

Carole, a first liner, made a rapid, graceful entrance onto the ice, got the tip of her figure skate stuck in the ice, the opposition wore real hockey skates, tripped over her own foot, fell down and was carried off….all within the opening minute of the game.

Another mother, Debra, had disguised herself in a red wig to keep from being recognized and, therefore, humiliating her family. She astonished everyone, mostly herself, by making a goal and blowing her identity, when the announcer shouted her name over the public address system.

At one of the practices the coach spotted me struggling to skate backwards and decided that this attempt qualified me to play defense. As I stood facing the opposition, frozen with terror, they repeatedly charged me, which caused me to spin around and around as the puck flew past me and into our net.

Despite the fact that we outnumbered them twenty five to seven, and we wore heavy, protective uniforms while they sported fashionable color coordinated pants suits, and we changed lines every two minutes to avoid physical exhaustion and collapse, and they only had one line throughout the entire half hour exhibition game we, the Livingston Zambunnies, were decidedly outranked by the Ville Emard Pussycats, who won by a huge margin – numbers which I have chosen to omit. Our only defense, and we never hesitate to mention it, was the fact that the Canadian mothers had been playing as a team for many years – something we should have realized when we saw them remove their teeth at the start of the game – and we had united only several short weeks before the game.

Our goal of further cementing relations with our friendly competitors had surpassed our expectations and promises to continue the tradition were pledged.