Sports reporting made a sports fan out of me
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Hearing this may not be a surprise to some of you, but I’m not a sports fan. No, not baseball. All those stats just make my head hurt. Yes, I know I go to football games, but it’s not for the football. Soccer? I’ve dated a few players, but the games, egh.
Now, if they had a shopping league, I’d be all over that. I’d be playing fantasy shopping all day long. I would have NationalShoppingLeague.com as my homepage. I would spout out Nieman Marcus, Versace and Gucci stats at every gathering with friends. I would cancel plans and ignore loved ones to watch intense shopping playoffs on television (especially on holidays that involve lots of work in the kitchen). But until NSL is born, I’ll just be a woman without a team.
I blame this intense disinterest in the world of testosterone for it taking me an entire year to write two sports stories in order to graduate. Not just putting these stories off, but writing them the day before the last issue, exactly a week before my graduation. That’s how much I love sports.
Fortunately, I recently acquired a good friend and insider in the Sharks world, and thus the idea of two sports player profiles was born.
I didn’t have anything to say about hockey, because I’d never watched a single game. But the stories about bodies and teeth simultaneously flying in the air had me slightly intrigued.
However, I’m just going to be honest, if a date with a really cute boy wasn’t involved, I may have never gone to a single game. And I may have never learned that the Sharks happen to be the best team in the National Hockey League. I also would never have learned that there is a bar beneath the rink where you can watch the game and drink. Suddenly, hockey wasn’t looking so bad.
Just between you and I, one Thursday night, alone, in a dark living room, I even had a sudden urge to turn on the television and watch a game. And, I may have even liked it.
So, there I was, a confused girl at the verge of conformity, on the day of deadline, inside a French vanilla-colored room with windows overlooking an ice rink, so nervous to interview hockey players when I wasn’t even sure how I felt about hockey.
The door opened and the media relations manager told me it was time to go downstairs. I grabbed my tape recorder and a few deep breaths. Two San Jose Mercury News reporters had now joined us. So, is this the backstage-pass life of the reporter I’ve always dreamed of being?
“We’re going into the locker room, but don’t worry, they’ll only be taking off their gear,” he said.
Whew. What a relief. I wouldn’t go near that room otherwise.
As soon as I entered the locker room, I turned around to see Joe Thornton, currently the top scoring player on the team, walk down the hallway.
Seconds later, veteran blue-liner Rob Blake walked in and a Mercury reporter lunged for him. Following Rob Blake was Jeremey Roenick, the player who constantly sends my roommate into passionate hockey tangents.
Douglas Murray walked past me a few minutes later, towering above all the players at 6-foot-3, and a reporter asked him if he could answer a question.
“I’ve got an answer for every question,” he responded, with a grin and sparkling blue eyes.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, Torrey Mitchell walked in, glanced at me with the prettiest face and shiny brown hair, and said, “Hey, how ya doin?” in what was possibly the sexiest Canadian voice I have ever heard.
Speechless, I could only nod. My knees went weak. And then, Torrey Mitchell took his hockey pants off. Suddenly, in that moment, the thousands of dollars in student loans, the multiple jobs while taking multiple classes, the late nights, the ever-looming deadlines, the major I’ve spent five years studying with no secure job opportunities — it was all worth it.
You know that saying, “Everything happens for a reason?”
I finally understand.