"Met my life gurus and shit like that" - Or, My Final Watson Report

I am sitting at my computer after weeks of procrastination trying to figure out how I could possibly fit the whole of my Watson Fellowship experience into five pages. Unlike a thesis or a term paper, I am not putting my writing on hold because I have nothing to write and don’t want to face the prospect of ranting for ages on a subject so inconsequential as the relationship between “Hunger, Consumption and Christianity” in The Lord of the Rings (as I spent nearly half of my waking hours doing my senior year at Holy Cross). Rather, I have everything to write that is, to me, of utmost consequence. My brain and, more importantly, my heart, are bursting to share each and every moment of this past year with each and every person I encounter. But when it comes to wrapping my mind around this incredible journey and formulating pure emotion into coherent sentences I find myself ready to implode - not knowing how to best convey the essence of my great adventure.

Although I shouldn’t be on the internet and should be writing my report, I check my email. A new message has just appeared in my inbox from Rachelle Beaudoin: a former teammate at Holy Cross, one of my dearest friends, my “little big sister” (as she is at least five inches shorter than me), my “mentor” and my initial inspiration in applying for the Watson in the first place. Rachelle was not selected as a Watson Fellow when she applied the year before I did, but her interest in the program fueled my own. When I learned that I was not an original fellowship winner either, Rachelle urged me to believe that all things really do work according to some greater plan. Her phone calls and emails were pieces of advice that only seemed acceptable from one who had not only gone through the same devastation before, but who also holds the same passion for ice hockey. And today, as I struggle to make this report as profound as the year it summarizes while the question of what my next life venture will be competes for mental attention, I find yet another email from Rachelle, offering me a couch to stay on, supporting my interest in Americorps and even urging me to take a position in her own city. Rachelle is not merely a friend – she is a soul mate, an inspiration and indeed my mentor.

So why go into such detail about a college friend when this report should be summarizing my year abroad? Well, to do that I must back track to before my fellowship year commenced. After my final hockey game at Holy Cross, I thought my career was over forever and I literally could not remove my equipment. I wondered, ff I took my skates off that night would I ever them on again? It was a prospect I could not fathom. But at that point I am not sure if I had a complete sense of why hockey was so important to me. Yes, I had been playing for 11 years and dedicated almost every spare moment of my time to bettering myself and my play, but other than the sheer love of the game I am not sure if I ever stopped to ponder just what hockey added to my life. In February of 2005 it was the inability to imagine a life without hockey that made me physically incapable of unlacing my skates, but it was not until my Watson journey that I fully realized exactly what a life without hockey would mean as I experienced life where hockey was indeed my only demand, my only currency, my only social web in an array of foreign settings.

At the beginning of my fellowship year I worried that my days weren’t “active” enough, that Denmark wasn’t enough of a stretch or as interesting as tramping through a third-world country on a donkey. Why did I choose ice hockey? If only I had taken Mysticism earlier on in my collegiate career, I would have proposed, instead, to hunt down shamans, monks and Sufis and walked the mystical path of enlightenment! But as I began to look deeply into my experiences, I realized I was walking my own unique mystical path – one that required me to play ice hockey. By playing the game that has shaped me and comforted me and pushed me to become better in so many ways throughout my life I encountered a number of personal “gurus” who have provided me with models of the way I would like to live out my adult life. Much like traveling to other lands enables me to pick and choose elements of various cultures to develop my own personal ethos, all of my gurus have shown themselves as extraordinary women (and a few men), whose qualities I would love to succeed in emulating and will be much better off if I do. Each woman is completely different from the next and each has offered me insight into an entirely different aspect of myself and my desires. But what unites them all is that they are all independent, strong-willed, free spirits - the kind of woman one has to be in order to successfully make one’s way into a “man’s sport.”

I never would have even traveled to Denmark had I not received a response from Laura Mackenzie in regards to the email I sent to nearly every ice hockey union in Europe requesting information on their women’s programs. Laura, as I have previously written, is a true inspiration. She began her hockey travels nearly 5 years ago, leaving Canada and going to play in Denmark and Australia with friends. Her travels were much like my own, only she did it all without a fellowship. In their first year abroad, besides making up for the partying they missed as busy Division I college athletes, she and best friend Tamra Jones were among the first to push for gender equity in both countries. When it was time to go to Australia, Laura fell in love and continues to fall for a man she met while “talking hockey” in a bar. Her passion for hockey is just a manifestation of her passion for life. She does everything with zeal: playing and coaching; providing in-home care for quadriplegics; learning Danish (which she advised me not to even attempt!); and dancing in her pajamas at midnight. At thirty years old, life is still fun for Laura and, to me, that is the one thing for which we should strive.

In Denmark there was also Tine Perry – women’s hockey legend and still one of the nation’s top players at 40 years old. Tine played when girls were not allowed play in any leagues and told me of her struggle to fight the inequality within the sport that is significantly less apparent today. At 40 years old, she is the most ripped mother, nay the most ripped woman, I have ever met. I envy her six-pack. She is a caring mother, player and coach who spoils her children with love and reminded me of the important role families – especially dedicated mothers – play in creating successful hockey players. If I am as cool of a mother as Tine when I am forty, then I have done something right.
(In this pic we have Charlotte Hansen - whom I didn't even get to mentioning! - Tine Perry and Laura).

I must also mention Camilla Bedmar, with whom I often filled days drinking coffee and talking about everything from hockey to books and esoteric religion. Though I share hockey with all of my teammates, Camilla is one of the few with whom I can also nourish my love for intellectual and spiritual dialogue. Often I am known only as “the hockey player,” especially when I choose hockey as my primary topic of study. But I am so much more. In fact, I consider myself much more of a bookworm than a jock – I am, I suppose, an “intellectual jock.” With Camilla I remembered that I am not alone in this respect. She too craves learning and understanding. She is one of the few people I met in Denmark who embraces the ideals of the liberal arts. She refuses to choose a career path based solely on the need for money and considers her self-assigned reading list far more important. Though life is till fun at 34, life is still serious, hockey is still serious and books are of utmost importance. Although her goal-tending will be put on the backburner this coming year when she has her first child, we all know she is not done playing and I know she will never be done learning.

Hockey in South Africa is small and women’s hockey is therefore miniscule. However, in the handful of female hockey players I had the pleasure of meeting, playing with and living with I encountered a handful of equally inspiring, fascinating women. It is no coincidence that I stayed in Cape Town with Kirsty Oxenham and her hockey-playing boyfriend Bobby. Both are two of the kindest most generous individuals I have ever met. Although hockey has become a recreational sport for Kirsty after a few years playing with the national team, she still thirsts for instruction and betterment. She is also one of the most cheerful individuals I have ever met and within hours of meeting we talked as if lifelong friends. Kirsty’s religious conviction is captivating and almost guilt-causing. Her positive energy and love has transformed her boyfriend into an equally uplifting and goodhearted person and due to her influence I sincerely feel a desire to better myself both in her presence and even now when we are an ocean apart.

Then there was Jadi Wessels who has used her difficult upbringing as incentive to better the lives of others. Her house is a literal zoo, filled with the countless stray and abandoned pets she has taken in and spends nearly her entire paycheck caring for. The rest of her check goes to Michaela, the 4 year old girl she began baby-sitting three years ago when she met her parents in a local pub and refused to let them take the child there all day every day as they were accustomed to do. Instead, she cares for her when she is not working and will not let the child feel the same pain and abandonment she once experienced. And Jadi is only 22. But for all the growing up she has already done, she luckily still has hockey, the one place she can still play. Although she hopes to begin coaching and in order to prevent South African women’s hockey from dwindling into nothingness, I hope she continues to be “selfish” in this respect and allows herself to keep playing and inspiring girls in that way.

Sabrina and Nadine also had to grow up too soon when their mother passed away when both were quite young. Sabrina, being a few years older, had to take on a maternal role for her kid sister, but it was actually Nadine who got her big sis’ into hockey. Their hometown of Durban is well-known as a surfing spot, but the ice rink was always a place of cool refuge after spending hot summer days out on the beach a few blocks away. Local recruiters asked Nadine to start playing when they saw her skate and when Sabrina got sick of watching and driving it was time to start playing herself. It was on the ice that they were again sisters. In fact, Nadine, who is probably the nation’s most talented female player, became the role model. The rink was therefore a retreat back into childhood for the sisters, as well. The two are now in their late twenties and leaders and coaches in different provinces. But they still meet on the ice in the annual inter-provincial tournament where they compete in the game that brought them together as sisters.

Tamra Jones is Laura Mackenzie’s true “other half.” The two became best friends as New Kids on the Block-obsessed teenagers and the rest is history – one long, amusing history of friendship, love, hockey and beer. Through our mutual friend Tamra readily invited me to coach at a girls’ camp in her now-hometown of Adelaide, Australia. The camp became more of a small power skating clinic in which the two of us were students rather than coaches, but I relished the opportunity to learn not only more about my skating technique but also about how to lead an extraordinary existence. Tamra grew up in a hockey household in Canada and it was only natural that she went on to play at Brown University. Although she was also recruited as a Division I golfer, her heart was with hockey. I would never have wound up in Denmark if it were not for Tamra, who was the first import player in Rodovre and then brought Laura to Adelaide and back to Denmark to play with her the next year. Tamra is still famous in Rodovre for her feisty attitude; in her first two seasons she staged a walkout of the Danish National Championships when the females were unfairly treated and bridged a social gap between talented and beginning players that once existed on our team. While Laura got “stuck” in Copenhagen, Tamra got “stuck” in sunny Adelaide. Not satisfied merely coaching, she is now gaining Australian citizenship so she can play for their national team and help them get to the next Olympics. Beyond being a hockey player, she has her MA in Education and is working towards a PhD. She is an entrepreneur who has started a company called “Hockey Fit,” which specializes in strength and conditioning for hockey players. She is a wine connoisseur and the “mother” to a house of four hockey players ranging from 18-35 years old. Time spent with Tamra is, above all else, fun. She lives each moment to its fullest, admittedly because he has had numerous friends die young and knows that life is too short not to make the most of it. Her wisdom far exceeds shooting technique and vineyard grapes; she spoke to my very fears about falling into a life of monotony and selfishness and showed me that it is indeed possible to “live the life you imagined.” She and Laura still dream of moving back to North America and starting a collegiate hockey program together and I sincerely believe that they will do it. Like Watson fellows, Laura and Tamra aren’t the kind of people that just say they are going to do something – they do it.

When I first met my New Zealand roommates Deb Bain and Sally Dickson I thought that they were in their mid-thirties. My jaw dropped when Sally admitted that they are nearly fifty years old. I want to be Deb and Sally when I grow up. At first I thought it was something in the water that seems to keep Kiwis looking so young, but I quickly learned that it is their active, healthy lifestyle that keeps them happy and young at heart. Deb founded the women’s league in Christchurch years ago and although she is the nation’s oldest player she is still one of the best. Her love for the sport leaves her unable to quit playing at the national level, even though most of her teammates are teenagers young enough to be her daughters. In addition to being on the national hockey team, she is a national water and downhill skiing champion, avid tri-athlete, moonlighting vending machine owner, and genuine goof ball.

Sally started playing hockey at the suggestion of friends who thought it would be a good place for her to meet a man. Instead, she met Deb – not exactly the relationship her friends had imagined. Although she is the more serious of the two, she is by no means boring; her award-winning travel agency earns her enough to live on, but she has a zest for life and activity that has allowed her to succeed in a variety of careers. In addition to their work and busy weekends camping, spending time with their equally amazing mothers and building a second home, they run the hockey league, which would fall apart without their dedication and wisdom. Deb and Sal were part-mothers and part-friends to me, caring for me and partying with me in one fell swoop. Their happiness was contagious and they are therefore my role models not merely due to their dedication to hockey, but due to their dedication to “the good life.”

“Coincidence is the anonymity of God,” my father wrote to me, and indeed God put these amazing women on my path to show me the way, to make this year easier, and to direct my future life. I expected to “study” female hockey players around the world, but little did I know that my journey would become such a self-study in which my “subjects” were in fact my own atypical spiritual masters – whom I found not in the religious ring, but in the rink. I learned about myself by witnessing the struggles and successes of these amazing women, who are all in so many ways different versions of myself at various points in life and altogether represent the various facets of my entire being. These friends, like Rachelle, are what kept me going this year through their hospitality, wisdom, company and outstanding example of how to live life with passion and joy. I now know that it was not merely my love for playing hockey that made it so difficult to take my equipment off when my college career ended. Hockey has been my life’s blood, has provided me with my most sincere friendships, has shaped me into the independent, out-going person I am now. And, thanks to these women, I now see that I can continue to be the very same person throughout my future life, whether or not I am playing hockey (though I also now know that I can and will never stop playing).

I have coursed the face of the earth and realized, just as in a mystical encounter, that everything really is one, that all people are connected in some way (indeed in the small women’s hockey world, one realizes just how small and connected that world is!) and that all things really do work out according to some higher order. What the Watson truly entails is putting one’s trust in a world that so often does its best to darken humanity and it is only by doing so that my sincere faith in humanity was refreshed and restored. Upon each of my arrivals, I was greeted with a smile at the airport and welcomed into a complete stranger’s home; I was trusted solely on my membership in the female hockey world, and trusted in others based upon this unique kinship and some distant notion of fate and faith that is no longer all that distant.