A lesson learned in three minutes and 36 seconds

Three minutes and 36 seconds.

But I’ll get to that later.

Growing up, my dad didn’t get to see a lot of hockey. I was a majorette. My sister was a Brownie. Thank God for my cousin Bobby.

So you can imagine dad’s excitement when my son Jacob was born, and then Justin. Not that they couldn’t have played hockey if one of them had been a Corrine instead. But given that they were boys it was pretty much assumed they’d learn to walk, and then to skate.

The reactions differ when I mention my boys play hockey, and in particular that one plays rep. Those that don’t have children involved in organized sport – whether by choice or because of finances – often give me that “You-must-be-crazy” look. To them the thought of getting up at the crack of dawn on a winter day to drive hours for a hockey game seems less than desirable.

But when people think I’m foolish for spending my weekends – and a few weekdays on top of that – freezing inside a rink, I think I’d be foolish not to. Aside from the fact that my kids are being physically active, I really appreciate that they are part of a team.

I’ve been told there is no ‘I’ in teamwork, but there is a lot of f-r-i-e-n-d-s-h-i-p. And hopefully my children will learn lessons that will carry them far through life – things like dependability, trust, responsibility, accountability, sharing, joy and how to handle disappointment.

Although I’ve discovered even I have work to do on the latter.

A couple of months ago my oldest son’s team started provincial play downs. The road to provincials, for our team, was going to be long and tough. While other teams received byes to sit out certain rounds, we would have to play every round.

But we won the first round. And then the second one. And after an overtime win in the third series, the stage was set for Game 3. The winner would move on. For the team that didn’t win, the quest for provincials – the one that in our case had so far lasted five weeks – would be over.

I’ve been to a lot of games in my career at this newspaper. I’ve seen teams favoured to win lose, the long shots who have come from behind to win, the tying or winning goal made at the final buzzer, and the tying or winning goal that came a second too late.

I’ve seen the cheers, and I’ve seen the tears.

This time it was closer to home. In that Game 3 our kids played their hearts out and led by one goal throughout the third period.

We were just three minutes and 36 seconds away from victory.

But then the other team scored a goal. And then they scored another. And in those final seconds they glove saved our final shot.

Our tying goal.

There would be no winning goal.

I dropped my head as the final buzzer sounded, not only because I couldn’t bear to see our kids’ tears, but I couldn’t bear for them to see mine.

All that work and no reward?

Talk about disappointment.

But such is sports. There are winners, and unfortunately for us in Game 3 in Round 3, there are – and I hate to use the word – losers.

So I thought about just what we had lost.

True, there would be no final round four. And we won’t be going to provincials, someone else will.

But then I thought about what we had gained.

Our kids had learned throughout our run that hard work is important. They went on the ice as a team, and they came off it the same way. It was no one person’s fault if we lost, just like it was no one person’s glory if we won.

And at the conclusion of that Game 3, the applause our team received when the scoreboard read 3-2 for the other team was equally deserved.

So when one of my son’s teammates stood in the middle of the dressing room afterwards and declared, “We didn’t win on the scoreboard, but we’re still winners,” there was the reward.

Because while it may have been the last three minutes and 36 seconds that counted, it wasn’t just the last three minutes and 36 seconds that mattered.

I hope that’s a lesson my boys always remember in this game called life.

And me too.