With the minor hockey season back in full swing, I’ve been spending many nights at the local rink watching my kids practice.
This year, my oldest is in U11 (formerly Atom) playing on the Local League team in Minto.
Once the roster was finalized, an email came from minor hockey searching for coaches for the team.
Within minutes of that email being sent, a friend of mine sent me a text saying, “I volunteer Mike Wilson to coach.”
I chuckled and replied that I would think about it.
You see, after coaching my middle child in baseball this summer, I swore I would never coach my kids again. That experience is best summed up like this: coaching a seven-year-old boy is like talking to corporate – they say they are listening, but really, they aren’t and will do whatever the heck they want.
The next day, my friend sent me a list of reasons why I was suited for the job.
After learning that another parent – someone I have coached baseball with in the past and I work well with – was willing to share head coaching duties, I threw my name in the hat.
Fast forward to last Friday night – our third practice as a team – and we were working on backwards skating drills.
The kids are doing great, making their way around the circles, when I turn to talk to one of the other coaches. The next 10 seconds are a blur.
I look down and see a head come between my legs…the next thing I know, I am flat on my back on the ice.
I immediately look over and ask the player if he is OK – miraculously, I didn’t land on the kid and he no worse for the wear.
After taking a moment to gather my bearings, I get up and “shake it off” like we were taught to back in the day. I didn’t hit my head, but my back and elbow were sore, but everything still worked.
We finished the rest of the practice, held our parent meeting, and all departed for the evening.
After getting home, my son told my wife about the big fall and how “it’s a miracle Dad didn’t kill the kid!” She asked how I felt – at that time, just sore – and she put our daughter to bed.
About 15 minutes later, she came out of the bedroom and said, “What the hell is wrong with your elbow?”
I looked in the mirror to find my elbow had swollen to the put it looked like a golf ball was under my skin.
“That’s not good.”
I texted our friend, a nurse practitioner – the same one who suggested I help coach this team – and asked her what I should do: go to the hospital or ice it and see how it is in the morning.
“Either way, you’re going to end up there,” she said. “Go now.”
The emergency room doctor took one look at my elbow and said, “Oh, it’s broken.”
Heck of an opening, doc.
“Let’s get you an X-ray.”
Within 15 minutes, I was in the X-ray room. About 15 minutes after that, the doctor came back in to see me.
“I don’t know how…but there’s no break. Nothing,” he said. “I would have sworn, based on how much it swelled in three hours, it was broken.”
This was music to my ears.
He put me in a sling, told me to ice the elbow, and rest. If the swelling doesn’t go down, he said, come back tomorrow.
Thankfully, the swelling went down. Now, instead of having a golf ball on my left elbow, my skin is about six different colours from bruising and very tender.
While it sucks that my elbow looks like the victim of a one-sided mixed martial arts fight, I learned three very important things from this incident:
– never turn your back to the players on the ice;
– don’t be ashamed to say you’re hurt on the ice; and
– always wear elbow pads.
Until next time, keep your stick on the ice.
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Mike Wilson is the editor of Midwestern Newspapers. Comment or feedback can be sent to mwilson@midwesternnewspapers.com.
