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For the first time ever, I felt like I was loved, like I belonged to something
#1

The Player's Tribune
Lallo Selman

This is a story about a boy who loved hockey so much that he forgot to love himself. I'm Lallo Selman, the Chicago Syndicate's 21 year old young star. The last time I wrote for The Player's Tribune, I was a 16 year old who had just signed for the SMJHL's Anaheim Outlaws, I was excited because I had just started the first step of reaching 11 year old Lallo's dream of being an SHL superstar and I had to tell the hockey world something so that it wouldn't be a problem later, I was gay. That was the first time young Lallo mixed his love life into hockey. You see growing up, I loved hockey so much that I would've never done anything to risk hockey for myself so when I realized that I was gay I told myself right away that it was something I'd have to keep to myself no matter what. Growing up in Switzerland until I was 13 and then Canada, I got to see the sports culture in two different countries and the one thing I could tell myself for sure was that it was not a friendly place for people like me. The problem is that I loved hockey, it was everything for me and I couldn't imagine my life without it. So I put myself on the back burner and put hockey first, I did everything I could to make sure nobody would find out; I didn't date at all in high school, when other kids would throw words like "*****" around in the locker room I'd keep quiet, I even became homophobic myself and it made me hate myself. I loathed that about myself, I loathed that I had to hide this thing from my teammates because I was scared of losing the thing I loved the most, I loathed that I wasn't "normal" and I loathed who I was. I had put my love for hockey above my love for myself.

It showed on the ice of course, by the time I was 14 I was the best player on a team full of 17 year olds and I was already being scouted by SMJHL scouts. On the outside I was impressive, I did well in school, I was well beyond my age in hockey and just about anyone you asked who knew who I was could tell you that I had a future in the world's premier hockey league. On the inside though I was slowly starting to realize that all the effort I put into hockey was to compensate for the effort I didn't put into myself. When I wasn't thinking about hockey, I was dark and empty inside. At home I pushed myself further away from my parents and my sister, I would shut down any attempts from them to connect with me. I lost pretty much any non hockey related friends by the time I was 15 because I just didn't have the emotional energy to treat them properly. On the inside I was completely out of control. 

Fast forward one year and everything began to change. I signed for the Outlaws and was ready to get started on fulfilling my SHL dreams but knowing that I had to live so far away from my parents in Montreal in order to do that, it was time for me to address the elephant in the room. I had to make things right with my family before I left and so I came out to them and told them everything I went through growing up in an effort to build a relationship with them again. That went well and the next thing I had to do was tell my agent. His answer was simple. Tell the world. He told me that the sports world was changing and that the SMJHL already had an out player in Halifax's Dominic Montgomery, he told me that if I would fall into that dark spiral again at this stage in my development it would ruin my career more than some discrimination ever could. And he was right, not right away of course, but I'd find out really soon that he was right.

My first season didn't go so great but I was the youngest player on the team and there was lots of excitement around me. I loved my new home and my new teammates were the closest ones I've had in my career. The season after my rookie season things started getting even better for me. I was promoted to the 2nd line and played well enough to earn myself a promotion to the 1st line along the team's star forwards Martijn Westbroek and Collin Gibbles. We were by far the best team in the league that season and all of us were so close, it was a great time and the peak of my life was just a few months ahead of me. The playoffs started and we got a tough semi final matchup against the back to back to back Four Star Cup winning St. Louis Scarecrows, we went down 0-2 and 2-3 and came back both times to knockout the league's unbeatable team. We were full of confidence and on our way to the Four Star Cup finals against the Montreal Militia. We went on to lift the trophy and the feeling that followed it amazing. For the first time ever, I felt like I was loved, like I belonged to something. The fans in Anaheim loved us and we were the talk of the hockey world. The Outlaws who eliminated that Scarecrows team to take the SMJHL's throne. 

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Things would only continue to get better going into my 3rd junior season, most of the team's star players from the Cup run got called up and I became one of the most important players on the team. At the start of the season, I was named captain. I felt a great responsibility to lead my teammates and make them be proud that they put their faith in me. It was a surreal feeling, after all that I had been through and all the worrying I had done over the years, the time I felt most accepted in the hockey world was when I was being myself. That season we had our backs against the wall. With all those call ups we weren't expected to do much but we had a great season and proved a lot of people wrong, coming one win away from going back to back as champions. That off season is when it all started to crumble.

With my SHL call up imminent, I told the Buffalo Stampede that I would be testing free agency. My mental state was going to be important to my career and I didn't want to have to deal with adjusting to a new locker room with new teammates. I didn't want to have to worry about being myself again and about whether I would be accepted. That's why when my agent called me to tell me I had been traded to Chicago, I was relieved. Several of the Syndicate's young stars were my Outlaws teammates and I knew that having them in my new SHL environment would be great to help me adjust to the big league. That's when the problems started. Syndicate GM Shawn Velevra called me that day to tell me that I'd be up with the big team that season. I was horrified. I wasn't ready. I felt it deep down, that if I went up that season I would flop big time and it would affect me really badly, so I asked to be sent down one last season. What a mistake. The season started off great but after 20 games or so I went on a big cold streak. My confidence started to dwindle and I could sense the fans turning on us. Every day became a battle with myself to perform because I felt that it was the only way that I could get that feeling of happiness back. I got so obsessed with my performances that every bad game would ruin my day and I'd take my frustrations out at home. I became so unbearably obsessed with playing better hockey that my boyfriend broke up with me with 5 games left in the season. We finished the season 9th and got brushed aside easily in the first round. I saw teenage Lallo's obsession with hating himself creeping up again.

I tried to spend the summer resetting but in reality I just made things worse. Whenever I was home all I could think about was how bad last season was and about the fact that I didn't have my ex to support me anymore. I found myself back in my teenage routine of spending every waking moment focusing on hockey in order to run away from all my other problems. I trained so hard that off season, I was determined to enter the SHL with a bang and I did just that. Despite my bad final junior season I was expected to be one of the league's top rookies and it didn't take me much time to show people why. 20 games into the season and I was tied with Mika Kandinsky for 1st in the rookie scoring race with 21 points. After 35 games, Mika was at 49 points. I had 23. 2 points in 15 games after such a good start was enough to ruin it all for me. Not only did my performances slip but so did the Syndicate's, we went from fighting with the Stampede for 1st in the division to falling out of a playoff spot. That's when my worst fear began becoming reality. I opened up Instagram after a game against the North Stars in which I missed an open net to tie the game and the comments started pouring in on my most recent picture.

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"Useless *****", "I knew Chicago drafting a gay was a big mistake, they're never good at sports", "This ***** missed an empty net, no wonder we're out of the playoffs with useless players like him", "Maybe if you spent less time sucking dick and more time playing hockey we wouldn't be so shit", "People really thought this ***** was gonna be a good player lmao, gonna get dropped in 2 seasons and then victimized himself over it".

Now I've seen abuse before over my pro/junior career. It comes from rival fans or even sometimes from your own fans when things are going badly. You get used to brushing it off and not making much of it. This time was different though, this time, I believed it. Deep down inside I asked myself if they were right while I was reading those. What if I really wasn't good enough? Would the abuse get even worse if I kept playing so badly? Chicago did give up a lot to trade for me after all, the fans expected a superstar. From there it was all downhill. Every day I showed up to the rink and felt like I was only worth the performance I put out there. When I would have a bad game, I would feel worthless, I would go home and read those comments and agree with all of them. Even when I had a good game, one bad move would be enough to trigger a bad reaction. There was a game against the Specters where I got a goal and an assist but took the penalty that they scored the game winner on and social media pinned everything on me. I got to a point where it was so bad that I felt like for every bad thing I did on the ice, I had to do 5 good things to make up for it. Like anything I would do to help the team would be disregarded if I was badly offside or missed a breakaway or something like that. Nothing was good enough. To a big portion of Syndicate fans, I was that ***** who cost them two really high draft picks and made them miss the playoffs and nothing more. It got to me because hockey was everything to me and feeling like I was failing at hockey made me feel like I'd failed at everything. I was only worth as much as hockey said I was because that was all I loved about myself.

That offseason I got a phone call that changed everything. It was the head of the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation, Mathias Seger. Not only did he want me to play for the Swiss team at this year's IIHF World Championship in Switzerland, he wanted me to be the team's captain. I was excited beyond belief. For the first time in months I felt like someone believed in me and like I belonged in this sport. When the team arrived in Switzerland one month later we were met by huge fanfare. This was expected to be one of the best Swiss teams ever and there was a real feeling that not only could we win more than one or two games but we could actually make the knockouts. Now I know that sounds a little anti climatic but for a small nation like Switzerland who's never been a powerhouse in hockey, we represented a big source of national pride and of national progress in the sport. This group was loved by the fans but more importantly this group loved each other. Everyone was so close and we always knew how to have fun together and how to lift each other up.

One teammate was different than the others though. Even though most of us had homes in the country, we still had to live in a hotel for the tournament to be able to spend time close to each other. We were all assigned roommates, mine was Anchorage's Daniel Bischoff. It didn't take me long to see that there was something different about Daniel. We hit it off right away and he started talking about how much he admired me and looked up to me even though he was only 3 years younger. At every team bonding activity, every team dinner and every team event I found myself with Daniel. It was more than that though, we were together all the time outside of team settings too. It was like we understood each other, like there was this connection between us. Daniel was great, he was always in a great mood and always trying to uplift everyone around him. He had a way of making everything feel lighter and from spending so much time with him in private it became clear that that was because he was so good at taking care of himself. Through all our late night conversations in our room, Daniel was one of the first people who truly understood me and one of the only people who've ever made me realize the importance of loving myself. That nothing mattered in this world except loving yourself and doing the most for yourself because once you did, the rest would come naturally. 

On the night before the game that could decide if we made the knockout rounds or not, neither of us could sleep so we stayed up almost all night talking. That night was different from the rest though, it felt different. After a couple of hours of talking we found ourselves lying shirtless next to each other and we knew that it just felt right. Daniel wasn't out publicly at the time but that all changed the next day when we walked into the arena before the big game holding hands. We ended up winning the game but still lost out on the knockouts because of goal difference but none of that mattered because that day changed my life forever. I'm so much happier now, I have purpose now, I see myself worth as so much more than just hockey and it's reflecting in my hockey as I'm on point per game pace 35 games into my sophomore season. I gained a part of me that I never knew I could have until now and that's all thanks to my boyfriend: Daniel Bischoff. We took a picture that night that I had to add below because that picture will always remind me of the night that changed everything for me. 

This is a story about a boy who loved hockey so much that he forgot to love himself and about another boy who came into his life and showed him that he would never truly love hockey if he didn't love himself.

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#2

im proud of both u and dylan
swiss bros stick together

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Armada Steelhawks Switzerland

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ty to @High Stick King @EvilAllBran and @Ragnar for the sigs
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#3

My favorite otp

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         Switzerland Outlaws Chiefs  Player Page  Updates  Chiefs Outlaws Switzerland
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#4

This is a story all about how
my life got flipped, turned upside down
and I'd like to take a minute,
just calm thyself
I'll tell you how I truly loved hockey once I loved myself

hodOOOOr'hOOOdoooooooor hoooodor hOOdOOORRRR, Hooooooodooooorrrr HoooooddddddddoooooooRRRR

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Never forget
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#5
(This post was last modified: 12-17-2019, 09:52 PM by KlusteR.)

That was a tear jerker. Love my Swiss boys Switzerland Heart

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Special thanks to @Carpy48, @Chevy, @Turd Ferguson, @fever95 and @enigmatic for the signatures!
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#6

Switzerland

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#7

Switzerland Heart Heart Heart Switzerland
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#8

Switzerland Heart

 
Falcons Monarchs Switzerland   Switzerland Monarchs Falcons
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Falcons Monarchs Switzerland   Switzerland Monarchs Falcons
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Credit for the images goes to @Carpy48, @soulja, @fever95 and @Wasty
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#9

Dom is honored to be mentioned in this, and we're both glad that his agent had nice advice. There have been a couple other queer SHL players, but they were from before Lallo's/your time, so this is reminding me that representation matters even in SHL land. V sad that he has had an angsty past, but happy for Lallo and Daniel! Cheers

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#10

12-19-2019, 10:00 AMbilbo Wrote: Dom is honored to be mentioned in this, and we're both glad that his agent had nice advice. There have been a couple other queer SHL players, but they were from before Lallo's/your time, so this is reminding me that representation matters even in SHL land. V sad that he has had an angsty past, but happy for Lallo and Daniel! Cheers

we call them
dallo selmoff

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Armada Steelhawks Switzerland

Armada Specters Wolfpack Steelhawks Forge Switzerland

Scarecrows pride Chiefs Riot Stars Blizzard Ireland

ty to @High Stick King @EvilAllBran and @Ragnar for the sigs
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