I won't give my age because that would be indiscreet, 46 (respects to the great Arthur Bach).

For as long as I can remember, I have allowed sports to define who I am.  It was not a choice or a plan, it started early and just kept rolling.  I was not the high school star athlete.  I flew under the radar.  Captain of the Varsity soccer team, role player and defensive specialist on the Varsity baseball team ( we won't speak about my wrestling career).  But to this day, if you ask someone who knew me in high school, I was the hockey guy.

Not many kids on Long Island played hockey back then.  It's funny that I never really looked at it this way when I was going through it, but you probably could make the case that I was the best hockey player in our school, not that anyone cared back then.  All our friends had a dek hockey team when we were in Jr. High, but I was the only one that really ran with it.  I tried out in college at Geneseo, but I didn't have the skating ability to compete with the kids upstate.  If I had tried out at 30, it may have been a different story.  From age 25 into my early forties, I played in the best league on Long Island, against top college kids, minor leaguers and even some pros.  We fought for all of the Long Island kids who came back after not making it (many folks would be surprised at how many kids have made the NHL from Long Island, probably a higher ratio than all other sports).

I remember at my 10 year reunion, when people asked me about playing hockey and I told them about the level I played at, they thought it was really cool.  At my 20 year reunion, they looked at me kind of surprised and unsure.  At the 25th reunion, they politely looked at me like "yeah right", and just moved on, lol.

Now I am on the decline.  I still pride myself on athleticism.  I still play shortstop for my softball team, which no longer consists of my high school friends, but of my daughter's ex-boyfriend's friends in their 20's (two by two, my friends dropped off over the years, I continue to hang on as long as they will allow me).  I don't play goalie in the top ice hockey division anymore (although I believe I still could if I could find the time to play more often).

The last couple of years, I have taken summers off to focus on softball and on coaching my son in baseball. Last night, I played for the first time since early March.  There is always a fear now before playing that first time back.  In fact, there is more pressure every time I step out on the ice than I ever faced growing up.  Every time there is a layoff, every time I play badly, there is the fear that it will be gone.  That it will just be too taxing physically and it will never come back again.  Even worse, there is the fear that other players will think that it is gone.  Last night, I jumped on the ice in goal for a scrimmage against some C level players, but against a top young goalie.  He just finished playing college hockey last year, but I have seen him and competed against him since he played Juniors for the Bobcats.

I'm sure he wasn't keeping score the way I was, but we alternated sides and I kept track of our "mini-games."  He won the first 4-3, I won the 2nd 1-0, him the third 3-1, I won the 4th 2-0. Then, toward the end of the session, they announced "Next goal wins."

Of course in my mind, that constituted the end of the 4th game and a sudden death finish to the 5th and deciding overtime game.  Luckily, our team immediately scored right off the face-off on the first shot and all the skaters left the ice exhausted.  I am not ashamed to admit that I took that mental victory and ran with it.

I have no delusions that at this point in my career whether or not I am better than my 20-something counterpart tonight, but I did fend off father time for another season.  I have always borrowed the phrase, "I'll play till they pry the stick from my cold dead hands," but truth be told, I will probably lose the opportunity long before then.  It just won't be this year.  There are positions in sports where you can get by on sentimentalism, but ice hockey goalie is not one of them.

Yet I am unsure how my inevitable failure will truly impact me emotionally.