I have never been good at sports.
By the time I’m nine years old, I have already flamed out of Little League Baseball (my batting average over two seasons is .000) so I try my hand at organized basketball. As was the case in baseball, I’m the weak link on the team. No matter how hard I try, I can’t sink a basket.
Then, one afternoon, several games into the season, miracle of miracles, I get the ball on a break away and drive hard for a layup. “Go Lenny!” everyone is screaming. My progress is unimpeded, and I am going to make it. I am going to make it!
And I do make it… the lay-up is a thing of beauty, the ball hitting the backboard and falling through the net in what has to be slow motion.
Only, the net is on the wrong side of the court. I have put the ball in my own team’s basket. The people in the stands weren’t screaming “Go Lenny,” they were screaming “No Lenny!” I leave amid hoots of derision and laughter and never go back.
There are many more examples in my life, most often involving my almost clinical inability to hit a golf ball, and the results are always the same. I’m not good at sports.
I have to wonder, do I gravitate toward music, writing, and film because I am bad at sports, or am I bad at sports because my natural abilities are geared to music, writing and film? Either way, it’s a shame, because I love sports.
I lose myself in the drama of the competition, and I marvel and the skill and athleticism of the competitors. I have been to a World Series game, an NBA playoff game, four Kentucky Derbys, four NHL playoff games, and more regular season baseball and hockey games than I can count.
Enter my younger son, Luke.
By the time he’s seven, he’s fallen in love with ice hockey. Wanting to share Luke’s passion the way I shared Taekwondo with his older brother (and yes, in spite of my lack of athletic prowess, Charlie and I did earn black belts), I enroll in an adult Learn to Play Hockey class. This despite not really knowing how to skate. So, predictably, I suck. Like, really suck.
I can only transition from going forward to going backward in one direction, I’m slower than molasses on a tin roof in January, and I skate with my head down. I try, I really do, but my brain and my body simply don’t like one another. “Hips,” my brain will yell, “rotate, now!” When my brain receives the “I’m sorry, we’re not here right now, please leave a message” message from my hips, it’s too late, and I fall on my ass, and sometimes on someone else’s ass, too.
But I really want to play hockey. It’s no longer only about spending time with Luke, it’s about wanting to experience the joy I see in every man, woman, or child I have ever watched play the game.
Figuring I’ll improve — I can’t get any worse — I throw caution to the wind and strike up a conversation with other players in the locker room after the Learn to Play class one night. We decide to start a team and join our rink’s beer league at the lowest possible level of competition. Since I’m the one to fill out the paperwork and organize the printing of the jerseys (they’re called sweaters in hockey), I’m made team captain. We call ourselves Blucifer’s Devils, and honestly, we’re a really fun group. (For those of you not from Denver, Bluficer is the terrifying horse sculpture with glowing red eyes welcoming visitors to Colorado at Denver International Airport.)
In our first season, summer 2019, the B’Devils win exactly zero games and lose eleven. (In a nice bit of symmetry, we lose the last game that season by a score of 11-0.) We pick up right where we leave off in the fall/winter season by losing our first ten games. We are so bad (“How bad are you, Len?”), every person at the rink, even the skaters on the other teams, wants to help us. We’re adopted as a hard luck case.
And then, it happens. We win one game, then a second and a third. We start to hit a groove. Confidence builds. Everyone’s level of play starts to improve.
Everyone except for me, that is.
“Shoulder, neck, and head,” screams Brain, “look up!”
“Shut up brain,” they respond in unison, “we need to look at the puck or we’ll fall over.”
And then I skate into another player, or a wall, or the net and fall over anyway.
“Dumb ass,” my brain adds, throwing salt on the wound.
I feel like an albatross around the necks of my teammates.
The fall/winter season falls prey to COVID and it’s time for the Summer 2020 season. We play well enough, finishing with a record of 4-5-1. In our final game of the season, we stop the top ranked team in our division from going undefeated, beating them 7-3. This team, the Salty Dawgs (also mostly made up of hockey parents) has been a thorn in our side since we entered the league, and it’s good to get finally get that win.
And here’s the thing. The last few weeks I feel I’ve started to turn a corner as a skater and a hockey player. I’m still one of the weakest links on the team, but I’m no longer a complete liability. (Yeah, that’s a low bar, but you have to start somewhere.) My skating is more crisp, my head is up more often, and I’m starting to have an intuitive feel for the game.
“Right foot, can you, um, er perhaps manage a hard stop on your inside edge,” Brain asks with trepidation?
“On it.” Right Foot answers, and lo and behold, I stop. WITHOUT falling over!
Last night was the championship game for our division agains those same Salty Dawgs. I had legit assist in our first playoff game (my second assist of the season), and another one last night in the championship game.
We were losing 4-2 with three minutes to go when I received a pass from one teammate, and put it on the stick of another. The 
whole sequence had the goalie moving in the wrong direction, and my teammate buried the puck in the back of the net. We went on to score two more goals in the next two minutes won the game.
We. Freaking. Won!!
I may still be a crap athlete, but now I’m a champion crap athlete. That’s right, I’m a champion! At sports!
As a thank you for doing the work of a captain, my Blucifer’s Devils’ teammates give me the honor of hoisting the cup first.
To quote the Zac Brown Band, “Life is good today. Life is good today.”
Thank you and congrats to my teammates. I love you all.
(Postscript — I started playing golf again in my 40s, and ten years later am still shooting 120 for 18 holes. I’m taking lessons now. If by next spring I’m not shooting closer to 100, my brain is going to instruct my body to throw my clubs in a lake. If that happens, curling here I come.)