Homecoming 2012

Meet Bernie, I created him in 2008 and he still "hangs" around

If you are reading this you obviously survived the weekend so well done. To put it simply this weekend and the days leading up to it were pretty crazy here. From Thursday at 9am to Sunday at 9pm I was at work a total of 61 hours. Since it would take me about that long to do a full recap of the weekend I will just do a daily highlight reel.

Thursday: Normal practice day for both teams, nothing too exciting other than ordering Chinese food for dinner while I waited for the visiting mens team to arrive. They showed up around 10pm which allowed me to throw in their dirty laundry and be home by 11:30. Stupid me and my insomnia stayed up watching movies most of the night though which made Friday seem longer than it was.

National Anthem as see from the Student Balcony

Friday: Game Day! Made it to work by 6am so that I could start my game day prep. Got both teams on the ice for their pregame skate and had laundry turned over pretty quickly. My women's team had practice that afternoon which made things a little tight timetable wise but nothing we couldn't all work with. It was actually a nice way to break up the day and the boredom that sometimes come while waiting for the game to start. After the game Friday is when the fun really started, and here is why. As the title says this was homecoming weekend. Which means for most schools a football game. Now I have pretty much nothing to do with football except that the visiting teams always use the locker rooms in the arena to dress. Now both hockey teams were home this weekend which means they each had a visiting team in the building, plus football and you have 3 visiting teams using 2 locker rooms. So after the men's game Friday the visiting team had to bag most of their gear and condense it in to a small changing room so that Saturday the visiting women's team could have a place to change. I left work sometime after 12am Saturday after having gotten all the laundry at least started.

Saturday: 4am came very early, even more so when it's pouring rain and I really don't want to move from my amazing bed. I managed to get myself up and to the rink. Pretty eventful drive to work actually which surprised me. Driving up the hill to the rink I came across a guy on a bike and a car in the middle of the street. I slowed down and rolled my window to make sure everything was okay. The kid of the bike tells me that he had just come across the car and that it was abandoned. I parked my car and proceeded to call campus police to get things taken care of. I checked out the car and the windows had been smashed out, it reeked of booze and oh yeah, there was a huge branch sticking out of the wheel well. I guess someone had too much to drink, missed the turn on to campus and went through the trees. Word of advice kids, DON'T FUCKING DRINK AND DRIVE!

Only better seat to watch the game is on the bench

   After my eventful morning the rest of the day went by pretty quickly. Had a pregame skate for the girls and the visiting guys. Did some laundry, watched some football, got soaked watching football, dried off and then it was game time...for the girls. I was busy trying to get things set for the guys so I sadly missed most of the girls game, but from what I did get to see they played very tough. They ended up taking the game to OT and came up just short falling 4-3. After the girls it was the guys time to play. The game didn't go as planned as they can do from time to time. I was kept pretty busy with lots of broken sticks and a puck that missed my face by an inch. After the game I cleaned up quickly and headed home to get what little sleep I could because I wasn't done for the weekend yet.

Sunday: Sunday was an easy day of sorts. I did a lot of laundry and a lot more laundry, and on top of that more laundry. The girls had their second game of the weekend and were able to swing the score in their favor for their first league win of the season. I was able to watch most of their game and it was a great way to relax after the crazy days prior. I've found I have become an awful fan of hockey now that I work in the sport, I can't just sit back and watch, I analyze. Sunday I was probably just too tired to think and watching was all I could muster. After the game I did more laundry and then pretty much had time to kick off my shoes and passed out as soon as I got home. All to wake up and start the week and prep for the next set of games.

Women's player lighting the lamp on Sunday

This week I hit the bus for the first real roadie of the year, we head down to Providence for 2 games. I'm excited to start league play for the guys, and catch up with my counterparts from other schools. I'm not looking forward to the 5+ hours on a cramped bus but such is life when your closest opponent is 3 hours south. I'll be sure to let you all know what fun adventures I get myself in and hopefully out of sometime next week.