Half Man, Half Horse, All Heart

Being a Boston native, there are a lot of things I find really strange about California, especially having been exposed to the Inland Empire for most of my time here.  From the crazy amount of traffic to how there could possible be so many different freeways for such a small area–even the popularity of Taco Tuesdays–moving to the West Coast definitely had some culture shocks for me.  One that I wasn’t all that prepared for, although I have heard inklings of it before having arrived, is that hockey was not a popular sport.  I know the NHL is never one of the major players on the national sports stage (a poll on what “NHL” even stands for could probably help prove my point), but I thought there would be at least some hockey, especially with the Kings having just won the Cup. (OK, $50 that at least half of the four to six people that actually read this blog have no idea what either of those things are.)

I came from a school and a state where hockey was huge, where the Boston Bruins managed to compete for attention with three other amazing dynasties, where people actually attended my high school hockey games and knew I was on the team.  Coming here, it seems that hockey is like an underground cult, and way too many people see me walking around with my bag and stick and have no idea what I’m carrying.

Lucky for me, the Claremont Centaurs helps to provide me with an outlet for my hockey craving. We play roller hockey, a mediocre form of ice hockey, but good enough to get some competition.  We play other club roller hockey teams from other schools, our main rivals being the USC club team, who we just played this past Saturday in a tournament they hosted in West Covina.  Unfortunately, our trend of only having enough players to barely field a team has continued, and this made for a very tiring day. With no substitutes at all, I had to play every minute of every game.  This fatigue definitely cost us 2 of the 3 games, as our initial leads against USC and Cal State Northridge vanished by the end of the game, while UC Irvine flat out killed us.