THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 26, 1995 TAG: 9511230214
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: John Pruitt
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
Add this line to my life experiences: I attended a hockey game in November 1995.
And next to it goes this note: Once was enough.
There are some things I can live without. Now I know for certain that hockey is among them.
I suppose, if I'd given it a moment's thought, I'd have known hockey wasn't for me. But going to see the Admirals was what my 14-year-old daughter wanted to do on her birthday, so we bundled up and headed to Scope - to be part of what I later learned was the team's record paying audience.
If they wanted a show, the audience got it. More about that later.
Somehow, I had the notion of hockey as a sport involving quick wits and rapid movements on ice.
I'll tell you, even if I didn't understand much about the game, I was taken by the dizzying pace. And I marveled that, despite being chased with a bunch of men with sticks and eventually confronting a threatening man in a suit so stuffed he looked like a character in the Michelin tire commercial, some of the players still managed to target a puck just right to score. I was outright impressed with how quickly one player could intercept another, steal the puck and redirect the action.
What I'd failed to learn was how much akin this was to the arena events featuring early Christians and hungry lions. If what we saw was sport, heaven help us.
How can it be sport that referees allow players to take off their gloves and protective helmets and pummel the only unprotected parts of their bodies, their faces?
How is it sport when an audience gets practically riotous when there's such a confrontation on the ice?
How can we teach our children that violence on television, in the schools, in the movies and in society in general is ruinous, yet take them to a gathering where the mantra is ``Fight! Fight! Fight!''?
How can we say it's childish for our children to hit each other on the playground, yet manly for two people to disrupt a competition to see if one can topple the other's block?
What makes a player worthy of ovation when he's being ousted from a game for being unsportsmanlike?
Maybe we picked the wrong night. Maybe our seats were in the wrong section. Whatever, it was an awful night, once the action started.
Before that, two Admirals players graciously came to our section and wished my daughter a happy birthday - a pleasantry she'll probably always remember.
The clue that things were going downhill fast came as we sang ``The Star Spangled Banner.'' Admittedly it's about as rhythmic as the instruction book to a lawn mower, but it's our national anthem. A man near us at times bellowed, bringing sometimes puzzled, sometimes sharp, looks from people nearby.
This same character later beat the plexiglass ``cage'' whenever a player was removed from the ice, often yelling ethnic slurs to match the player's last name.
The two men sitting next to him made so many trips for beer that, finally, one of them had to stand, weaving, for a minute to get his bearings on the steps. They returned empty-handed, no doubt a relief to the woman who had gotten doused after their previous trip.
So as not to limit the action to the ice, a nearby woman decided to slug it out with a security guard when she and her equally obnoxious partner were asked to leave.
I want to think this isn't the typical experience, but everyone I've since told about the fights has offered, ``That's hockey!''
Oh, no, that's barbaric. I've seen it.
One day, I hope my daughter realizes our leaving early wasn't to shorten her celebration but to get out of a situation not worthy of either our money or our presence. by CNB