Sports

This past weekend Whitmore Lake hosted an organized “Pond Hockey” tournament. Dozens of teams came out and everyone had a great weekend, especially in the beer tent. All the organization brought a different simpler sort of pond hockey to mind. Here’s a column I wrote a couple of years ago about that.

When my son was a lot younger, I coached his ice hockey teams. This meant that several mornings every week, at about 5 AM, I would join a bunch of other dads carrying our lifeless little bundles of kid across frozen parking lots and into the rink, stuffing them into miniature hockey pads and skates, then chucking them out on the ice.

Playing hockey on a Zamboni-groomed indoor rink is great for a kid. You always have decent ice, the lines and nets are regulation, and you have those Plexiglas-topped walls to smash into when you want to scare your mom. You have benches where you can sit between shifts and have squirt-fights with the water bottles. And afterward, there’s juice boxes and brownies in the locker room, so you can have a food fight while you’re taking your gear off.

Last weekend I spent more time watching the Masters golf tournament on television than I like to admit. I guess I find it strangely comforting to see tanned, handsome, self-assured millionaire touring golf professionals occasionally shank a five iron into a sand trap.

To me the highlight of the weekend was Fred Couples making a serious run for the Green Jacket. I loved this because:

a). He is fifty years old and has more gray hair than I do;
b). His name is "Fred;"
c). In an elite sport where everything a player uses, wears, eats, drinks, or thinks about is computer engineered for maximum performance and endorsement value, this guy was playing the most prestigious tournament in professional golf wearing slip-on boat shoes with no socks.

Tonight I caught the finals in Olympic Ice Dancing. This sport has been evolving greatly over the past twenty years, to the point where these days there are a lot more creative costumes and routines and a lot fewer guys in greasy ponytails. I always make sure to watch for the quality of the side-by-side twizzles. The announcer told me to.

Two of the Ice Dance pairs are University of Michigan students. Meryl Davis and Charlie White went into the free dance with a good chance of winning a gold medal. Charlie recently said that about the only thing that could top a Michigan football game would be winning a medal at the Olympics.