The season approaches
I picked up my Sioux Falls Stampede season tickets over the noon hour today. (The season opening home game is Saturday, Sept. 24). My usual pre-season desire was reinforced by an ad in Sunday’s paper that appears to be part of a tremendous new ad campaign.
The ad copy reads:
instead of a paycheck…it’s more than a game.
That’s why I love USHL hockey. These aren’t guys out there playing for thousands of dollars a game or worrying about bonus clauses in their contract. These are kids age 20 or younger at the beginnning of the season playing for a chance — repeat, chance — to get a college hockey scholarship. They’ve moved hundreds if not thousands of miles from home, family and friends to chase that chance in a town of which they may have never heard.
A handful might someday end up with a professional hockey contract. For now, though, when they skate on the ice and the puck drops, they’re pursuing a dream that, if realized, still doesn’t give them a paycheck — just an opportunity to play at yet a higher level. When that is your desire and motivation, you really are talking about more than simply a game.
Hockey captures the essence of Canadian experience in the New World. In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold, hockey is the chance of life, and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive.
Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock
September 12th, 2005 | Tags: Hockey, USHL | Category: Hockey
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