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***boom*** · 01-02-2022, 11:34 PM

[780 words, x2 media]

(note: This is a follow up to the article I posted last night. Today was complicated and I hope to articulate my thoughts. This is told through a mixture of present-day and past stories so I can get it all together. I’m enjoying this slice-of-life style writing and I hope you do too.)

It was finally draft day. Sophie Bordeleau settled in to watch dreams come true for many prospects from all different backgrounds. The commercials gave way to the commissioner of the SHL walking to the stage, giving prepared remarks, playing to the crowd. After this, it was time for the festivities of the draft picks. As expected, Lias Ekholm-Gunnarsson went first overall to the Winnipeg Aurora to great fanfare, and highlights of the Nevada BattleBorn centre played. Next up were more great picks, as players like Bodhi Utah, Sisyphus Embros and Tim Riggins - to Sophie’s hometown Patriotes - flew off the board. As the fifth pick for Toronto was being announced as defender Ergo Nomic, Sophie’s phone pinged. Seems a forward prospect out of Anaheim had gotten in a bit of hot water during a Twitter AMA, getting into a quarrel with fans over some comments over politics, and things were getting pretty heated. She groaned at reading the exchanges - due to her sexuality and position as a hockey player, she was no stranger to heckling from boys at games and online and didn’t get how someone could just remove themselves from things. As the draft went through 8th and the Edmonton Blizzard selected a centre out of Newfoundland in Valters Denisova, Sophie shrugged and put down her phone to enjoy the rest of the draft.

As anyone who has taken science knows, light travels faster than sound, and in this case it was the phone that started to light up with notifications just as Tampa Bay stepped to the stage to make the 14th overall pick in the first round. Sophie tried to ignore them, figuring that it was something unrelated, and then the name came through: “Lesgo Brandon”. Upon that name sounding through the speakers of Sophie’s television, it suddenly hit her that this was the same player who had had the disastrous Twitter AMA earlier that day. Someone who was ignorant of the realities that people faced and fought for every day was living the same dream of the players that Sophie looked to model her game after. Someone ignorant was living her dream, spouting off nonsense on social media and getting to still succeed.

Fuming quietly, Sophie’s mind flickered back to something that had happened the previous spring at her high school. One innocuous day during a lunch break, she decided to visit the pride group that had been set up at her school, only to find one of her fellow first-years being consoled by other students. Sophie recognized them, as they had been to the pride space a few times, though never saying much. She caught a few snippets of the conversation; seems they had been facing some harassment from an older student who was on the football team and had recently won a championship for the school. Hearing this, Sophie was stunned; she had always naively assumed that the system would work itself out and that people would face justice. It seemed as though this was in fact a lie, and that being Good At Things was the actual determinator.

She was jolted from her reverie by the sound of the next pick coming over the speakers; Chris McZehrl Jr. had been selected by the Buffalo Stampede. Unlike the previous pick, Sophie was well aware of this family’s history; they’d produced some very talented yet polarizing players who could at times be embroiled in controversy. Her mind snapped back to the young student who had been failed by the system in favour of a person who skipped Justice due to their talent, and Sophie wondered: had she ever gotten extra chances due to her skills at hockey? The draft marched on as she sent a text to her best friend: “going to break the system if another one of these guys skates right on by with talent.” After a rather engaging conversation between the two of them, Sophie emerged with a new resolve: she was going to do what she could to make sure people felt safe and seen, starting with her school and hockey team. While she maybe couldn’t prevent people from getting hurt in the world, she could make sure that they were caught when they fell and that people were aware of it.