Pee Wees

by Rich Cohen

  The Pee Wee A Bears had a Bad News Bears quality. We’d become a dumping ground for good players with an attitude problem, for disobedient, uncoachable kids with an interest in e-cigarettes and curse words, Double A players held back in hopes of reform. The experience of being relegated was supposed to teach them humility, but it only pissed them off. That was the edge, the chip on the shoulder of half the Single A Pee Wees. The key player—our version of Kelly Leak, the minibike-riding thug who made the Bad News Bears formidable—was our short, foulmouthed, towheaded center …

  Number 4, Tommy McDermott! The oldest and smallest kid on the team, he moved less like a North American player than like a European—all dipsy-doodle stick-handling, toe-dragging finesse. He’d forsake the easy way, preferring the fun of making some kid look clumsy, slow, and stupid. If Tommy were a painter, you’d call him baroque. If he were a living room, you’d call him busy. He was a classic small-town bad kid, always in trouble at the rink and at school. Caught vaping. Overheard telling racist, anti-Semitic jokes.

  On the way home from practice, Micah would speak of words and phrases that he’d learned from Tommy McDermott.

  “Like what?” I asked one day.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Please. Just one.”

  “OK. ‘Beat my meat.’”

  “What else?”

  “‘Blow job.’”

  A parent complained to the board. “I knew my son would eventually learn these things,” she said, “but I was hoping for a few more years of innocence.”

  When Tommy told racist or anti-Semitic jokes, he did not seem to know what he was saying. He delivered them as you might deliver a box. Here it is. After a particularly tasteless example led to a brawl, Coach Pete sent an email to the team:

  Subject: Respect and teamwork

  All: It has come to my attention that there had been some inappropriate behavior in the locker room. This is disappointing, especially after such a good start to the season, with strong team camaraderie. As always, my job as a coach is to guide our team on the ice, at practice and at games, but it’s also my job to demonstrate to the kids what it means to be a team player. I hope you will join me in reminding our players of the value of respect of the game, coaches, players, and others on and off the ice. This is an integral part of our ability to work together as a team, as well as coexist in our hockey community. My hope is that from this day, we will uplift and support each other as we grow as a team.

  Coach Pete

  Tommy was no different from half the kids I grew up with—a good kid having a hard time. Two sets of parents, divorce, etc. He gave the Pee Wee A Bears an attitude. The Double A team was like the 1996 New York Yankees, squeaky clean in suits and ties, thanking coaches and mothers. We were more like the 1975 Oakland Raiders, scalawags in flips-flops and T-shirts, believing in only one thing: just win, baby! From the start, our kids had a single goal: catch and beat the Double As.

  SEPTEMBER

  The first cold nights. The leaves on the maple trees began to turn, gold at the tips, red at the stems. They didn’t know they were dying. The grass was stiff when the school bus came, and there was woodsmoke at night, football weather, bonfires, cheerleaders, and homecoming. Each day was shorter than the last. The best were indistinguishable from the best days of spring, yet the opposite. April afternoons portend the coming of summer, while September leads to winter, when everything is sheathed in ice. In one case, you’re ascending. In the other, you’re falling. There’d be no way to survive it without hockey.

  The Pee Wee A Bears had their first game just after Labor Day. We were in the NMHL, the Nutmeg Hockey League, which meant we played two games a weekend, one home, one away. Including tournaments, the kids would have fifty games before the season was over. Every NMHL team is ranked on opening day. Rankings are based on the organization’s previous performance, self-appraisal, and whatever else goes into the all-powerful algorithm. About eighty teams are ranked. Those that finish in the top twenty play for the Tier 2 championship. The next twenty play for the Tier 3 championship. (Tier 1 is Triple A.) The Double As began the season ranked fifteenth. The Single As began ranked fifty-second. In order to catch the Double As, the Pee Wee As would have to climb. You did this by beating top teams or at least staying close. Better to lose a tight one to a top team than to squeak by a cellar-dweller. Coach Pete didn’t even want to play any team ranked more than ten spots behind us. If a team was ranked in the bottom half of the NMHL, you could beat them and still lose position. The reverse was also true. In other words, you could lose by winning and win by losing.

  The games were booked by Alan Hendrix, a parent-coach and also our scheduler. It was a hugely important position. During the hockey season, the scheduler has more effect on your life than any spouse or boss. A brilliant scheduler means a glide through the fall and into spring, a rise from darkness to light. A bad scheduler sets your kids up for humiliation and sets you up for early mornings, long drives, and lack of sleep. Micah’s Squirt scheduler had sent us to every corner of the state yet never attended games. Her husband went instead. We joked that she must be having an affair.

  Coach Hendrix was a terrific scheduler. Every game was booked with the algorithm in mind. No goal would be wasted. We started at home against the Enfield Eagles. The Winter Garden is one of the smallest rinks in the NMHL. No concession stand. No coffee machine. Just ice, boards, Plexiglas, bleachers, locker rooms. You’d never guess such a place could be the site of so much drama. In an age of huge facilities—at the Palisades Center Mall, we played beside a bowling alley—the Winter Garden was a wonderful throwback. It was Wrigley Field or Fenway Park, a lyric little bandbox.

  Pee Wee kids carry their own bags, sticks, and jerseys, laundered and toted on wooden hangers, like tuxedos for a prom. They dressed in silence before that first game, nervous. That’s a pleasure of any sport—the accumulation and relief of stress. Until the puck is dropped, you’re not sure you’ll remember how to do anything. Your only thought is Don’t screw up! Coach Pete was wearing a black jacket, jeans, and Vans. His hair was swept back, and you could see razor burn above his collar. The parents waited in the bleachers, as nervous as the kids. I know I was. I kept thinking to myself that Micah barely made this team; he was the last player selected, which should make him the worst kid on the ice. I wondered if the evaluators had been right in the first place. Maybe he did belong in the lower group.

  The Pee Wee A Bears were an odd mix of speed and grit. It did not take long to see that they had something special. The kids zipped the puck all over the ice in that first period, and scored, but took their time doing it, as if savoring. In this world, style can be as important as skill. Every kid contributed. They cheered one another and fist-bumped on the bench. They hooted, “Arc, Arc, Arc,” for their goalie. The feeling among the parents was Someone made a mistake; this team is way better than it should be.

  Coach Pete played three lines. Tommy McDermott centered the first, with Patrick Campi on one wing and Broadway Jenny Hendrix on the other. Barry Meese centered the second, with Leo Moriarty on one wing and Jean “Jack” Camus on the other. Duffy Taylor centered the third, with Broadway Julie Sherman on one wing and Micah on the other. We had two defensive units: Brian Rizzo and Joey McDermott; Rick Stanley and Becky Goodman. Becky, fast and smart, often had to cover for Rick, who was slow but tough. He was dangerous in the way of a jellyfish. He could hurt you, but only if you stepped on him. Roman Holian, a big, blond right wing who now and then missed a practice or even a game to attend Ukrainian Camp, sat out most of the first game. Roman had improved greatly since tryouts—kids grow over the summer—but Coach Pete, working off a dated depth chart, hardly noticed.

  Micah had played center his previous seasons. He had to learn wing, which would take time. He kept drifting to the middle of the ice—that was a problem. And the game was indeed faster, the players better, but that turned out to be good. In such a case, you either fail or adjust. It took a few shifts,
but he adjusted.

  He got his first scoring chance at the end of the period. We were already winning 2–1. Tommy had deflected a shot taken by Brian; Barry had banged a rebound in from the crease, the area immediately in front of the goal that’s shaded blue and bordered with a red line and that belongs to the goalie. (An opposing player cannot precede a puck into the crease.) Duffy was battling for possession along the boards. The puck popped out of the scrum. Micah got it and went up ice. He was skating beside Broadway Julie. He crossed the blue line, turned, and passed to Duffy, who was coming in late. Duffy faked to Broadway Julie but passed to Micah, who went behind the net and passed to Broadway Julie, who sent it back to Duffy, who lasered the puck cross-ice to Micah, who flipped it over the Enfield goalie’s shoulder into the net.

  A characteristic post-goal celebration

  That first goal was crucial for Micah’s season. It told him he belonged.

  The game flowed back and forth from there. Tommy dominated with speed, and tremendous acceleration. The puck was a yo-yo that kept returning to his stick. Early in the third period, he passed to Jack Camus, who was fifteen feet from the net. An Enfield defender skated at Jack, who blanched, then threw the puck into the corner. His brain could not forget those concussions. The best players have a bad memory. Like dogs, they remember only the good times. Jack was too smart for the game.

  Coach Pete waved Jack to the bench. Broadway Jenny hopped onto the ice. She swarmed the Enfield goalie like a paparazzo, softening the scene for everyone, including Patrick Campi, who broke a 3–3 tie with a blast from ten feet inside the blue line.

  Micah scored again a few minutes later. Our forwards had peppered Enfield with every kind of shot, but their goalie was solid. Micah had taken two runs. In the first, he went behind the net and shot the puck from the far side—the standard hockey wraparound. Goalies are usually prepared for it. As soon as a forward goes back there, the goalie slides to cover the far post. Micah’s second attempt was like the first. He got the puck and went around the net and again attempted a wraparound, this time trying to jam it in with force. But the goalie was strong. He not only stopped Micah but sent him sprawling. Micah began to make what looked like the same failed maneuver, only this time stopped halfway behind the net and skated back, catching the goalie out of position. He slid the puck in for his second goal.

  Meanwhile, the parents: Jerry Sherman was cheering, Sue Campi was toasting with her third beer of the day, and Parky Taylor was banging on the glass, shouting at Duffy. Jocko Arcus was standing behind the goal and moving his arms, as if controlling his son Dan with strings.

  When the final horn sounded, it was Bears 5, Eagles 3. Nothing better than starting the season with a win. The Ridgefield parents gossiped in the lobby as their kids changed. Many of us already had visions of glory. Coach Pete came out and stood with us. He was happy, too. He knew we had a good group. In such a case, he said, a big part of the coach’s job is to simply step aside and let the kids play.

  * * *

  Pop Warner football starts in August and is done by Thanksgiving. Little League baseball starts in April and wraps up in time for summer vacation. Youth hockey goes on and on. It’s an endurance test, an expression of time. It carries through three of the four seasons, sees the coming and going of autumn and winter and spring, the falling and returning of leaves. A player might start as a boy, have his first wet dream in a hotel room at an October showcase, be interested in girls by Christmas, and emerge from the state tournament as a man. The length of the calendar means ups and downs, streaks and slumps, stretches of excitement followed by longueurs in which the wind dies and the ship stalls in the doldrums.

  In mid-September, the Bears were 5 and 0. We’d beaten the Greenwich Skating Club and the Greenwich Wings, the Bedford Bears and the New Rochelle Lightning. By the end of the month, the proclivities and mannerisms of each player had been revealed. Becky Goodman, our biggest player, blond hair cascading down, eyes fixed on the advancing forward as she glided backward toward our net, was the best defender, a rock-solid presence who could be beat but not outplayed. Tommy McDermott, our first-line center, was the principal scoring threat—now and then he’d go end-to-end. Barry Meese—“Moose!”—our second-line center, often seemed like he was about to score, then didn’t. Philosophical question: What happens to all the beautiful plays that leave no mark in the record books, the double moves that end with a puck rattling off the post? Barry led the team in that invisible category—the most almost-goals, the most almost-assists. Roman Holian found a way to contribute. He had a knack for finishing. He’d jump into the Plexiglas behind the goal when he scored and shout, “Tak!” which, according to Micah, means “Yes!” in Ukrainian.

  A handful of early-season moments stand out. Joey McDermott intercepting a pass in our zone, putting a puck off the boards onto Leo’s stick, Leo head-manning it to Barry, whose shot turns into a rebound, which Jack Camus buries. Rick Stanley, our tall, quiet, dutiful defenseman, scoring with a floater from the blue line. Our goalie Dan Arcus dropping into a split as he reaches up to snag a puck out of the air.

  The Pee Wee A Bears overperformed. We were a third-tier team that, with the just-right mix of players on the ice, could turn a close game into a route with a deluge of goals. The hockey played at such times was wide open and free, unsound and fun to watch. Between-the-legs passes, off-the-glass passes, from-behind-the-net passes and shots, boomers off the pass—known as one-timers—slap shots from the point. It was a highlight reel when it worked, but not everyone approved. When the team switched into high gear, some kids faded. You had to be fast to play this way—and creative. You had to forget a lot of what you’d been taught. It was the hockey version of playground basketball. Barry Meese, Patrick Campi, Broadway Jenny Hendrix, Broadway Julie Sherman, Roman Holian, Jack Camus—none of them could keep up when things really got going.

  Coach Pete was fine with it, because it worked. But it soon became clear that Coach Hendrix hated it. Even when we were winning, he said we were winning “like idiots, stupid and ugly.”

  “There’s a right way to play this game and a wrong way,” he explained. “This is the wrong way. It will not work against top teams. It’s elitist and excludes half our players. We need to play team hockey—good, solid, sound, textbook team hockey that includes everyone.”

  I thought his beef was really about his daughter Broadway Jenny. She was a dutiful player—hard work, no magic. She could not keep up with the top skaters when they started blazing. Coach Hendrix wanted the team to adhere to a style more amenable to Broadway Jenny’s talent. She was supposed to be a leader but became a bit player at such times, watching a handful of ne’er-do-wells turn the game into a skills competition. They’d score, they’d win, they’d crank the music in the locker room. After each victory, one of the kids—usually Tommy or Duffy—would vow to catch and thrash the Double As, “those flexing try-hards!”

  The rest of September was a wash of color, vibrant and indistinct. It’s not the games I remember. It’s the blur—the excitement, stresses, and satisfactions of a hockey parent. In my mind, it’s always early morning. I’m waking Micah in the dark, carrying his bag and jerseys to the car, closing the trunk softly so as not to wake the rest of the family. We are the only car on the road. Micah sleeps in back as I search the radio for anything but politics. The sun comes up, revealing green New England. We join a handful of Jeeps and Hondas on the interstate. I am convinced that each of these cars carries a hockey player and a mother or father en route to a game. You see them bleary-eyed at Dunkin’ Donuts. The kids nod to each other, but the fathers look away, convinced of their solitude, believing they are unique and not in fact part of a demographic, living one version of a life that’s being lived by millions of others.

  It’s not the towns I remember, nor the faded industrial cities. It’s the rinks, which, taken together, form a web that spans the entire region. The Sono Ice House in Norwalk. The Northford Ice Pavilion. Bennett Rink in West Haven.
And the prep school rinks: Taft, Brunswick, Kent, The Gunnery in Washington, Connecticut. The walls are papered with ancient team photos: 1935, 1926, 1918. You could spend an afternoon studying the faces in these pictures, as redolent of a lost world as a wooden hockey stick. Zagat should publish a guide with each facility ranked and reviewed. It’d be good to be forewarned about the coldness of The Gunnery, or told where to get a decent cup of coffee near the Twin Rinks in Stamford.

  The kids hang their jerseys from hooks, drop their bags, head for “dryland training”—jump, stretch, run the bleachers—then get dressed. There’s music in the locker room. It’s meant to launch the kids onto the ice like bullets from a gun. The task of assembling the playlists and hauling around the speakers tends to fall to a self-appointed player. For the Pee Wee A Bears, it was Brian Rizzo, who, in addition to classic hockey hair, had classic hockey-music taste. He blasted the same songs that my teams listened to in the 1980s: “Walk This Way,” “It’s Tricky,” “Welcome to the Jungle.” Coach Pete talks to the team before each game as Coaches Rizzo and Hendrix lean against the wall, nodding. Some kids devour these speeches; others, like Tommy McDermott, try not to laugh.