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Why do I play Hockey? - The Players Tribune - Printable Version

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- Ballerstorm - 04-05-2016

<div align="center">Why do I play hockey? I grew up in Wales in a town called Llanflwnyddwndllwnmawr that I'm sure nobody has heard of. A town that hardly has any ice, hardly has any hockey. I don't have the exact words to tell you why I play hockey, so let me start with telling you how much I love this game.

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I remember being the only kid on the team who would get his mom to drive him for an hour and a half every day for practice. There was no hockey in Llanflwnyddwndllwnmawr so I had to join the team of a neighboring town to play. I always tried to stay as long as I could after practice because it would mean I had to wait less time until the next day I was on the ice. I never wanted to leave, I would always tell my mom, you can go home I will sleep in the dressing room and she would laugh at me, telling me the Zamboni driver needed to get home too. I got to know him well, his name was Frank, he was a nice man. Sometimes my mom would go for coffee with the other moms after the game and Frank would let me skate as long as I wanted. Those were my favorite days. I was young and thought to myself, nothing except hockey matters to me.

My parents learned pretty quickly how much hockey meant to me and they used it against me. When I was young I didn't care about my grades at all. Like I said, hockey was the only thing that mattered. One day I came home from school and my mom was waiting in the kitchen. She looked at me and said your teacher called and said you're failing classes. My mom grounded me that day. She told me I wasn't allowed to go to hockey practice for 2 days. I balled my eyes out and thew a temper tantrum like a little kid screaming, no mom you can't do that! but she didn't budge. Those were the longest 2 days of my life. I remember staying up all night with tears in my eyes watching YouTube videos of the greatest hockey players I could think of thinking to myself I want to do what these guys do.

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After that day my mom never got another phone call from a teacher. I wasn't going to make that mistake again. I got better grades and never missed another day of hockey. I made sure I made the most of every practice and every ice time I had but I knew that I wasn't learning all that I could. Practice in Wales was nothing like practice in North American hockey. The coaches are volunteers in Wales and most of them aren't very good. The coaches didn't have many skills to pass along to us and that is why most players from Wales are never any good. I knew if I wanted to be better I had to teach myself. Every day I watched hockey videos. I tried to emulate what the players on the screen were doing, how they did it, why they did it. I drilled into my brain the ways different nations teach. Russians teach skill, skating, stick handling, and build from there. North Americans teach the game itself. They have camps for power skating, camps for stick handling, and teams are taught how to play systems, how to hit, how to play together.

I tried my best to take everything I saw and make it into my own game. Every time coach let us have a water break I slammed some water as fast as I could and tried to work on stick handling like the Russians. When we did drills as a team I always pictured how my team would be doing it in a proper North American system and then put myself where I would be in a successful position. All those times after the practice was over was my time to skate. The entire sheet to myself was my favorite, that was when I could fly, grabbing a puck as I skate by and trying ridiculous moves on an imaginary defender like I saw pros do on YouTube before celebrating like Ovi. In those moments I thought to myself, This is the only thing I ever want to do.

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Game days were my favorite. That was when I could really test out everything I had been practicing. It didn't always work out though. I remember one of my first games when I was still learning I tried to make a crazy spin move in my own zone that I saw Denis Savard do on YouTube. I lost the puck and the other team scored. Coach screamed at me on the bench. All I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and hide from my mistake. By the end of the season coach didn't scream much. I had become the best player on the team and I was able to beat anyone on the ice at any time. I desperately needed to play better hockey if I wanted to go pro one day.

After that first season I got a call from The Cardiff Devils of the Elite Ice Hockey League in Wales. I was ecstatic and barely heard a word the coach said after he told me he wanted me to play for them the next season. I was going to get to play against really talented plays in the Elite Ice Hockey League and get some real coaching. It turned out only half of that was true. The coaching was great and I learned a lot of things I would never have been able to teach myself. Nuances of how to play various styles and systems that you just don't see on video. The half that wasn't true was the talented players part. I thought it would be much more difficult than it was versus the players in this league. I was like, isn't it supposed to be harder than this?

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I remember my first shift of my first game clearly. I grabbed a loose puck in my own end and I turned with the puck and saw the defense man a few feet off the boards. I knew I could get by him so I skated hard past him before he could cross over and turn to chase me. As I got into the other teams zone the other defender tried to support but I cut to the net and shielded him from the puck with my body. I used my favorite move and pulled an exaggerated toe drag held out as long as I could to get the goalie to bite and go down before putting it top shelf. I think I scored four goals that game.

I broke the Elite Ice Hockey League record for goals with 74 goals in 32 games that year and I loved every second of it. Every practice, every workout, every game was heaven to me. But I still had an empty feeling inside. I was loving every second of it but I knew there was more. That was when I decided to move west and seek out the SHL. It was strange at first learning a new city, a new way of life in the west. None of that mattered when I stepped on the ice in my first SMJHL game. Everything finally clicked. That was what I had been waiting for my entire life. All of my passion and all of my love for this game came together when I finally got to play in the SMJHL and later the SHL. I felt whole, like I was doing what I was meant to be doing, and I knew I had to let more kids in Wales find this.

So, why do I play hockey? The simple answer is what many players would tell you. The love of the game. I wont deny that to be true. I play this game because I love it, but now I have another reason.

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For the past two off-seasons I have traveled home to Wales, to my home town of Llanflwnyddwndllwnmawr. I've invested in new ice rinks, gear for kids, and coaching for the coaches. I know every kid isn't going to be like me and teach themselves so I want to help the coaches get better so they can make the kids better. I bring friends I've met in the SHL. Great coaches and players to put on clinics and help build the hockey community in Llanflwnyddwndllwnmawr. One day I hope to see many more kids like me playing in the SHL from Wales.

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I used to play hockey simply for me. Now, it's bigger than that. I play hockey to inspire the next generation.

Who knows, maybe some bored kid back home is watching my highlights on YouTube now. That would be cool.

Randy Randleman</div>

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- Dangles13 - 04-05-2016

Good read. I like that's it a SMJHL article as well, most of us forget our roots as soon as we make the SHL. =D>

- Ballerstorm - 04-05-2016

Quote:Originally posted by Dangles13@Apr 5 2016, 05:32 PM
Good read. I like that's it a SMJHL article as well, most of us forget our roots as soon as we make the SHL.&nbsp; =D>
SMJHL media > SHL media

- Copenhagen - 04-06-2016

Great article, made me believe Randy was real for a minute there!

- Steelhead77 - 04-23-2016

<a href='index.php?showuser=1643' rel='nofollow' alt='profile link' class='user-tagged mgroup-10'>Ballerstorm</a>

this was awesome! =D>