The Okotoks Colours
Slap Shot (George Roy Hill, 1977)
Though my primary interests going back a long way were art, literature, philosophy, and history, I also loved playing and watching sports until well into my teens. We lived out in the country starting when I was thirteen and I commenced playing hockey for the town of Okotoks, Alberta in the position of goaltender. I tried out for Bantam AA hoping against hope that I might have a chance to move on from there to junior hockey and maybe even college hockey, though I was already perfectly aware that I didn’t have a professional career ahead of me in the NHL, my not exactly being supernaturally gifted. I’d had to work really hard to be as good as I even was. I was doing well in Bantam AA tryouts but I found the locker room energy oppressive and the coaches sadistic. Late in the running my game totally collapsed on me and I made a complete ass of myself, such that not only did they cut me in the final round, they demoted me, with all the unfeeling meanness at their disposal, to the lowest division of minor hockey, division five. The other boys had already heard what had happened to me when I walked into the locker room for the first practice and though they teased and poked at me a little it was clear that almost all of them were nearly as embarrassed as was I to be way down in the dirt of division five. That being said, the locker room energy was so much more congenial at the bottom of the ranks and we had a marvellous coach—a farmer and mechanic named Coach Joe—who made us both enjoy the game and excel, each in our own individual capacities. This team turned out to be unusually excellent, cutting a wide swath through the competition. Early on we played a scrimmage against the division four team and kicked their ass handily. As the starting goaltender I was essentially the team’s quarterback, but I was only the second best and most critical player. We had a fairly short and innocuous kid with an NHL-level slapshot—I’m not fucking with you—that he could also aim with unusual precision. He was by far our highest scorer. In the end, we actually managed to win the provincial championship for division five. I remember it extremely well. We were up by one goal in the final two minutes and I told one of the defensemen to please not let the other team get a shot because my legs felt like jelly. When we actually won the collective exultation was the most emotionally intense thing I have ever experienced. The whole team dogpiled on me, screaming and yelling, a clamour of insane joy. I think I knew then that I was going to quit hockey. What had just happened could not be topped, at least not by the likes of me. However, we still had to go and play the big North American minor hockey tournament in Montana where the teams were of a much higher caliber and we did not win even a single game, getting outright obliterated on a couple occasions. Okotoks was a bit of a rough town. Two of my fourteen-year-old teammates almost couldn’t go to Montana because they already had criminal records. I grew very close to all those boys in a short period of time…and then never saw them again. Well, there is sort of one exception. A few years later I was watching television and saw an anti-smoking PSA featuring Thelon, a former teammate, who was dying of emphysema or something like that. Most of the kids on that team had been smokers. It really drove Coach Joe crazy. He was constantly benching kids he’d caught smoking behind the arena.
My father was a workaholic but he was also passionate about sports and I suspect that a lot of my own enthusiasm derived directly from that. He played football and basketball in high school and part of the reason he had me start working out with a personal trainer quite young was because he didn’t want me to have the kinds of chronic knee and back problems he’d suffered on account of sports injuries. I remember one time when I was really little I worked up an elaborate treasure hunt for my dad’s birthday which ended with us playing catch with a football in a soccer field near where we then lived on the southwest edge of town. I originally had no intention of playing basketball with the school team at Strathcona-Tweedsmuir, but the coach, Mr. Nelson, encouraged me to try out in grade eight so I gave it a shot. That year was a nightmarish disaster. The other boys were ruthless with me, calling me “chicken legs” and suggesting that I might want to consider the possibility that I was genuinely retarded. They were all vicious little vipers. I got one basket the whole season. Whenever me dad would come and see a game I was crushed by humiliation and shame.
Toward the end of high school I basically lost all interest in team sports. I would tease the jocks by insisting that all team sports are inherently homosexual in nature. Quite often they’d chuckle contentedly and admit that I might be onto something. They never really had the same contempt for me that the arts kids did…and do to this day (grade eight basketball aside). By the end of high school the only sports I watched voluntarily and with any regularity were boxing and tennis. That hasn't really changed. In both boxing and tennis I marvel at the stamina of the competitors. How is that person still standing?! I liked to smoke weed and watch tennis because it enhanced the metronomic pulse of the game, the announcers only intervening during pauses. We had a little satellite dish out at the acreage that didn’t pick up more than about twenty-five stations but one of them was HBO, so I got to watch a lot of top-tier boxing and became quite a connoisseur. I was also the only person I knew who was watching the early seasons of Oz and Mr. Show with Bob and David. Naturally, I liked to get properly high for those also. Ah, kids.
.jpg)
