07-28-2021, 04:33 PM
[902 words, can't wait to have been too early for IIHF double media or something]
![[Image: XUwFeeC.png]](https://i.imgur.com/XUwFeeC.png)
Editor’s note: It’s been weird to suddenly be in a spot of getting transfer offers, especially after I had written that off. I wish Austria the best, and have no ill will there. Wally was incredibly understanding of the situation given the position he was put in and I appreciate it so much. I was looking to transfer as a J player and lost that chance due to IIHF rules before I could make that happen. I'm excited to work on reforming that and improving IIHF immensely as a member of that HO.
No one reached out and hit me up before I was finally free to transfer or anything and the pitches were wonderful all around. This is lore, nothing more.
- 7
This is the tenth entry on The Player's Tribune in an ongoing series following hockey player Jimmy Wagner through his journey of playing professionally. You can read his first piece “Hey Dad” here, or view the index of his entries here.
It’s a common enough saying, especially in hockey.
The team? A family.
Your teammates? Brothers.
It’s true, for sure. Sometimes family takes unique forms.
I always considered small families great. I had Kate, Sara, my father, and my teammates both in red and in orange, what more could I need? Losing my country, and the subsequent fallout costing me the connection to my country, would have been impossible to predict.
There we were though, Sara and I standing outside of LAX on a summer morning, simultaneously back home and more lost than ever. Minutes or hours passed with us there processing the last 18 hours before Sara took my phone, plugged it in, and punched in a call. I held the phone up to my ear on autopilot just in time to hear Kate’s melodic but groggy voice - “Jimmy?”
The flood gates opened as I choked out “we’re back early.”
When Kate and I first met in Carolina, it was anything but normal. We met at a club like most 19 year olds would, hit it off incredibly well. At the same time though, she was an exchange student at Duke from Sweden and I was travelling the country chasing a dream of making it to the big time as a hockey player. The brunch and dates that followed went well, but we but then the summer apart after just meeting was rough, and when the next fall rolled around our late nights and exhaustion was shared but the schedules rarely lined up. Neither of us had much time to pursue dating, and it was a lot of extended home stays where we’d spend time together and then a week and a half out of town. Our friends would laugh at us, chastise us, and wonder what we were even doing at times. We didn’t want to see other people, but it was hard to have a relationship like that so young, doubly so after not really having anything serious when I was growing up in Austria.
Eventually we matured a bit and settled into dating, the distance between Durham and Charlotte was still a pain, I was likely on my way to California as she was about to graduate, and yet we kept pursuing what was there. Eye contact with words implied turned into “I love you”s, which - by the time we were living in Los Angeles - was eventually followed with the joking question as I was out the door to practice “more than hockey?” It became one of our little bits, and as the months and years went by the actual answer faded into irrelevancy. She largely understood, born and raised just outside Gothenburg with an older brother that grew up playing hockey, but more than most of my family on this half of the earth was a big ask, and she'll claim she didn’t mean it seriously.
It was hard to explain the situation with my father and my country to those brothers though, as much as they wanted to help. They mostly offered meaningless solutions, but it was actually Kate’s family of all people that stepped up these last few years and basically adopted Sara and I as young adults. We were a part of every holiday, every tradition, and they took the two of us in without any questions asked. We never spent the winter gaps alone, we had visitors flying out to California all the time, and they always made Sara feel just as welcome as they did me.
The amount of support Kate has given me over the last 6 years has been more than I could have expected from anyone. She carried me through my darkest points and I’ve tried every day to show her that same support and passion. When I got on my knee last summer to ask her to be my wife, I knew I had found the place in the world I most belonged. 19 year old me would have been shocked that it wasn’t on the ice and that I said “yes, even more than hockey” just once. Now, with Kate and I getting married over the holiday break earlier this season, and with that coming new citizenship, I’m proud to have the opportunity to play for who I’ve considered our family these last three years.
My life is still hockey, but it’s more than that now.
![[Image: q7lxxqK.png]](https://i.imgur.com/q7lxxqK.png)
![[Image: swedens-flag.jpg]](https://www.sweden.org.za/images/swedens-flag.jpg)
Editor’s note: It’s been weird to suddenly be in a spot of getting transfer offers, especially after I had written that off. I wish Austria the best, and have no ill will there. Wally was incredibly understanding of the situation given the position he was put in and I appreciate it so much. I was looking to transfer as a J player and lost that chance due to IIHF rules before I could make that happen. I'm excited to work on reforming that and improving IIHF immensely as a member of that HO.
No one reached out and hit me up before I was finally free to transfer or anything and the pitches were wonderful all around. This is lore, nothing more.
- 7
This is the tenth entry on The Player's Tribune in an ongoing series following hockey player Jimmy Wagner through his journey of playing professionally. You can read his first piece “Hey Dad” here, or view the index of his entries here.
It’s a common enough saying, especially in hockey.
The team? A family.
Your teammates? Brothers.
It’s true, for sure. Sometimes family takes unique forms.
I always considered small families great. I had Kate, Sara, my father, and my teammates both in red and in orange, what more could I need? Losing my country, and the subsequent fallout costing me the connection to my country, would have been impossible to predict.
There we were though, Sara and I standing outside of LAX on a summer morning, simultaneously back home and more lost than ever. Minutes or hours passed with us there processing the last 18 hours before Sara took my phone, plugged it in, and punched in a call. I held the phone up to my ear on autopilot just in time to hear Kate’s melodic but groggy voice - “Jimmy?”
The flood gates opened as I choked out “we’re back early.”
When Kate and I first met in Carolina, it was anything but normal. We met at a club like most 19 year olds would, hit it off incredibly well. At the same time though, she was an exchange student at Duke from Sweden and I was travelling the country chasing a dream of making it to the big time as a hockey player. The brunch and dates that followed went well, but we but then the summer apart after just meeting was rough, and when the next fall rolled around our late nights and exhaustion was shared but the schedules rarely lined up. Neither of us had much time to pursue dating, and it was a lot of extended home stays where we’d spend time together and then a week and a half out of town. Our friends would laugh at us, chastise us, and wonder what we were even doing at times. We didn’t want to see other people, but it was hard to have a relationship like that so young, doubly so after not really having anything serious when I was growing up in Austria.
Eventually we matured a bit and settled into dating, the distance between Durham and Charlotte was still a pain, I was likely on my way to California as she was about to graduate, and yet we kept pursuing what was there. Eye contact with words implied turned into “I love you”s, which - by the time we were living in Los Angeles - was eventually followed with the joking question as I was out the door to practice “more than hockey?” It became one of our little bits, and as the months and years went by the actual answer faded into irrelevancy. She largely understood, born and raised just outside Gothenburg with an older brother that grew up playing hockey, but more than most of my family on this half of the earth was a big ask, and she'll claim she didn’t mean it seriously.
It was hard to explain the situation with my father and my country to those brothers though, as much as they wanted to help. They mostly offered meaningless solutions, but it was actually Kate’s family of all people that stepped up these last few years and basically adopted Sara and I as young adults. We were a part of every holiday, every tradition, and they took the two of us in without any questions asked. We never spent the winter gaps alone, we had visitors flying out to California all the time, and they always made Sara feel just as welcome as they did me.
The amount of support Kate has given me over the last 6 years has been more than I could have expected from anyone. She carried me through my darkest points and I’ve tried every day to show her that same support and passion. When I got on my knee last summer to ask her to be my wife, I knew I had found the place in the world I most belonged. 19 year old me would have been shocked that it wasn’t on the ice and that I said “yes, even more than hockey” just once. Now, with Kate and I getting married over the holiday break earlier this season, and with that coming new citizenship, I’m proud to have the opportunity to play for who I’ve considered our family these last three years.
My life is still hockey, but it’s more than that now.
Jimmy Wagner
Team Sweden
