I Coulda Been an All-Star Pt. 2

At Bob Jones there were no organized sports in which you played other schools. I guess it’s their whole don’t associate with sinners stance. In junior high they made teams out of your grade and you played after school. Even in the University the teams were made out their organizations (read: fraternities). Being a religious school, this meant that the main sports were baseball, soccer, basketball, and floor hockey. That’s right the fascinating sport of floor hockey. The thing is I was pretty good at floor hockey. I would even say that I was dominating. At least as dominating as you can be in your own grade playing floor hockey. I loved playing the rover. I could play both ends of the field/court. And I wouldn’t hesitate to take a shot from the center line. Why? Because I was that damn darn outstandingly good. The problem is that in 7th grade our coach (home room teacher) decided I’d be best suited as a goalie. Goalie? You can’t score being a goalie. I was not a happy camper. But, you know what? He was right. With my gangly legs and arms I was built to be a floor hockey goalie. However good I was on the floor, I was even better in the net. If my team scored one goal, the game was usually over then. I was a wall. I carried our team into the playoffs (every team made the playoffs) as a one seed. We cruised into the finals. There was one slightly scary moment in the semi-finals when our opponent nearly scored a game tying goal in the last minute of regulation. After blocking a shot their left wing went top shelf the rebound. I blocked it with my head. That’s how good I was. Our team was pretty confident going into the championship game. Why wouldn’t they be? They had me in goal. Throughout the game I blocked shot after shot. I was in the zone. There was one problem. My team couldn’t score either. We were deadlocked at 0-0 after the third quarter which meant overtime. Again I blocked everything they could throw at me, and again my teammates couldn’t put the puck/ball in the net. With a minute left our opponent was making a charge. I could hear the place go quiet. Their center fired a shot. I slapped it away like a gnat. I did the same with the rebound shot. Unfortunately, I didn’t do the same with the second rebound. I saw a glimpse of the red ball as it passed by my head. I heard it hit the next. I saw the other team cheering. I was devastated. I was the sole reason our team lost the championship. I was the Bill Buckner, Alex Gonzalez, and Scott Norwood of floor hockey. I remember sitting in the locker room with my head and my hands, fighting back the tears. I still had my goalie mask on. How lame. Not that I was near tears, but that I just wrote a whole post in which I bragged about my floor hockey skills.