What it take to be a hockey mom; in a word, SACRIFICE:
I have been a hockey mom for over 15 years. My son is now in his second year of college and hopefully will make the roster again for his DIII NCAA Hockey team. My daughter is a senior at high school who has lived away from home for the last three years to pursue her hockey aspirations of playing DI hockey and making the USA National team. We have moved 4 times to support our children's dreams. We have gotten up at 3:30 in the morning to make it to the rink for a 4:30 AM practice or a 5:00AM game. I put 150,000 miles to date on my Dec 2004 vehicle, driving my kids from one rink to another, all over this country and into Canada.
Being a hockey mom is a special experience that I would not trade for anything. You have to be tough to be a hockey mom. As a hockey mom, you have to learn to let your children go, to let them fall and get back up all on their own (both figuratively and literally),let them face adversity, budget money to pay for the sport and not go broke, take criticism from your opponents with a grain of salt, and let the heckler's voices go in one ear and out the other. As a hockey mom, you learn to sacrifice early morning sleep, fresh smelling vehicles and garages, traditional holidays (most tournaments fall on the holidays), extreme time management, and keen space organization. Your kids have to be tough to be a hockey player, and not just physically. They have to be mentally tough. The lessons learned in Hockey are lessons that will carry over into their lifes. How to work as a team, to rise above failure, to set goals, to make sacrifices, to work through fatigue, to have dedication, to stay focused, and to develop a competitive spirit.
I had the privilege of watching Track Palin play his last year of hockey, as he played on the same team as my son did in Michigan. You may ask why would a kid from Alaska play hockey in Michigan. I have read with great amusement several people asking just that question with such ridiculous speculations as to the answer. The answer is fairly simple to any of us in the hockey world. Unlike other youth sports where talented players move from high school to college, hockey for the male player has a stop gap called Juniors. In order for a player to move from youth to college in most instances, they have to play Juniors. The chances of a player from Alaska getting that opportunity is not as great as a player playing in Michigan, Minnesota, New England, or Canada. Even the female players in Alaska very often move away from home to increase their opportunity to pursue their dream of playing in college, to further their education while playing the game they love. Track's decision to join the military could not have been easy, given the amount of sacrifice he and his family had made already, throughout his youth, for him to pursue his hockey dreams. He had already been tendered (made) a junior team after his final year of hockey in Michigan, when he announced he had joined the military instead. As a mother of a hockey player, this told me two things; he was a young man who understood the lessons learned in hockey and he came from a family that taught him well about honor, sacrifice, and working for something greater then himself.
How does all of this translate into my support for Sarah Palin. I know from her comment of being a hockey mom, that she understands what it is to be tough, to work hard, to sacrifice, to support a team, to deal with adversity, to let the heckler's comments go in one ear and out the other, to budget money and control spending, to organize, and to negotiate. How do I know this, because she is a hockey mom, DUH!!!!
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