Hockey Earns A New Admirer

As a soccer player from Pleasant Garden, N.C., I never felt much of a connection to ice hockey. The sport was something I saw as a Canadian thing, a Minnesota thing, and, after watching my own Carolina Hurricanes play, a lose-your-teeth, get-slammed-into-a-wall thing. Needless to say, I stuck with sports that kept to the grass and away from the skates.

Sports writing at Harvard was a game changer.

Those early and rather ill-informed perceptions lost their credibility when I watched Crimson hockey for the first time; it opened my eyes to a sport that combined grit and grace, hard hitting and finesse.

When I ventured to Bright Hockey Center last year as the neophyte beat writer for the hockey team, I immediately hated the cold and alienating feel of the rink, the loud sound made when puck connected with stick, and the juxtaposition between the sports with which I was familiar and the one which I was presently facing.

My hatred was short-lived, however, as I quickly realized I was covering a sport that, yes, was unfamiliar, but that was absolutely exhilarating, that pulled you in and kept you on the edge of your seat from the starting whistle.

Unlike the frequent stops for substitutions, fouls, penalties, timeouts and play calling with football and basketball, hockey doesn’t give the watcher the chance to take a breath. It’s fast-paced and intense, with players jumping from the bench to the ice in one movement, taking hits that would put most people out of commission.

But they always get up in an instant, without thought of pain or hesitancy, hungry for the puck, hungry for a goal, and hungry to hit back.

I was hooked.

The players skated with a fluidity that seemed effortless, making it look easy. I found myself believing that I could go out onto the ice and glide with similar ease and comfort.

Of course, reality checked in and I remembered that I could hardly put one skate in skate of the other when I was in a rink; I more frequently ate ice than moved on it.

Before I knew it, I learned about fore-checks and icing, the nature of penalties and power plays, and that losing one’s teeth did not actually happen on a regular basis.

Mostly, I learned that ice hockey excited passion in its fans, coaches, writers, and players in a way that was unique and powerful. The very things that had initially turned me off from the sport—the cold, the noise, the hefty equipment, and the ferocity—were all exercises of the passion inspired by it. I came to understand the sport not through its technicalities or rules, but by recognizing the aggression and the desire in each of the player’s eyes—a mark that distinguished an athlete from a mere mortal.

Like any Division I athlete, hockey players train year-round. Whether it’s during holidays or during the summer, they are practicing, lifting weights and building fitness, all the while proving their dedication and fostering their hunger for the game.

Although the hockey season has just begun, it has not yet failed to continue my growing admiration. Just in the last women’s game against Brown, I saw tri-captain Kate Buesser go crashing into the net in an attempt to score; that kind of commitment is impossible to deny and impossible not to admire.

Although I began as a soccer player, I have become not only a hockey writer, but also a hockey fan. Whereas I used to scoff, I now respect both the players and the sport. The sounds are still loud and the hits still hard, but instead of being unattractive and ominous, they have become the representation of skill, music to the ears of one who knows the passion behind each.

Grass may have been where I first came to love sports, but it is on ice where I now find myself transfixed by the turn of a blade and the swipe of a stick.

—Staff writer B. Marjorie Gullick can be reached at gullick@college.harvard.edu.