Beware of Hockey Moms

Last week at the Republican National Convention the GOP’s nominee for vice-president, Sarah Palin, identified herself as a ``hockey mom.’’ In a lot of the country, people just shook their heads knowingly trying to pretend they knew what a hockey mom was. But outside of the upper Midwest, New England, and apparently Alaska, most people really don’t.

At one time in my life I was primarily a hockey writer. The hockey team in the town I worked was ranked the number one high school team in the country. Several of their players went on to the National Hockey League. I wrote about college hockey, minor league hockey, even a couple of articles on women’s hockey. And I heard from the hockey moms.

Hockey parents are unique. It’s the only sport where parents have to drive their kids to practice before school because of rink availability. There are also hockey tournaments; so parents have to drive their kids hundreds of miles in the cold winters to get to all of their games. You can imagine what it’s like if parents have two or three kids playing at different age levels. I also imagine that Sarah Palin buys her kids new hockey equipment every year.

Those may be some of the factors that make hockey parents and hockey moms, shall we say, a little on the feisty side. Besides the berating of coaches, referees, other players and other parents, they sometimes get in a little snit with the local paper. I took calls from hockey moms about spelling their kids names wrong; a legitimate complaint even though the kid had a name like Tzulowinowski or something likes that. And you’d try to explain that the coach, or worse, a high school girl calling in the score to the paper, didn’t know (or care) how to spell the name.

There were some hockey moms who weren’t even subtle. People I know, especially those who don’t consider high school sports a life or death, are surprised when I tell them that there were parents who would call the paper and say we weren’t writng about their little Johnny enough. Parents had it in their minds that how often we mentioned their kid would affect whether they’d get a college hockey scholarship to a good school. The rest of their lives was in our hands. Of course, there were scouts who went to the game who knew far better than me whether a player was a college or pro prospect.

Some of the hockey moms (and dads) really were barracudas and I’m kinda glad I’m not dealing with them anymore.