Growing up I lived and breathed for hockey, it was my favourite thing in the world. Like every other kid, I wanted to play at the highest level possible and have fun playing the game I loved. The problem was I was never blessed with great hockey skills. This meant my whole life chasing the dream and year after year getting released from different teams in hopes that one year I would get a chance.  

   I was never given the opportunity until 2016 when Bluevale Hockey decided to take me as part of the team. I remember the coaches walking in the room and telling us to look around as this was our team for the year. Without hesitation, my new teammate Kyle Rodgers gave me a pat on the shoulder and congratulated me on making the team. It was a crazy moment knowing I had met my goal and made the team I wanted to be a part of. This was an opportunity I was not going to let get away from me.

   The lesson I learned the quickest from this team was that nobody has their stuff together. Not him, not him and not me. At the end of the day, this was a school program and we were student-athletes. We had some great hockey players but some struggled in school. We had guys like me who were pretty good at school but still learning the pace of the high school game. Where many people saw weakness I saw the very foundation of a team. 

   I had a lot of help from guys like Adam Robertson and Troy Moffitt on how to get better on the ice. I remember helping a teammate younger than me with his math assignment. This is what teammates do, they build off each other strengths and weaknesses. Nobody had it together but it seemed together we had it. 

   Now the season wasn't full of all positives, and we had our up and downs, we weren't perfect. We didn't always show appreciation to our coaches by following rules we had agreed upon. In the end, we knew they had our best interest as their priority. Although they may not have impacted every player I know there are guys including myself who owe the coaches a great deal of gratitude because of the men they are today. No member of the team and no single event defined what this team was. We had become a team which had expectations of winning, but sometimes lost sight of our vision. We knew that every time we stepped on the ice if we didn't leave with two points then we didn't do our job. We never lost sight of our end goal but we didn't always take the best route to accomplishing that. I learned that sometimes how you do the job is more important than the job itself. The team had given me a lifetime of lessons to which I could have never learned inside the classroom. 

   We won games we didn't deserve to win, and we lost some games we deserved to win. We lost 6-1 to Grand River only to come back a week later and challenge them in their house. While we didn't win that game it showed what team we were. We had lost our starting goalie at the time, but our rookie goalie Eric Miner had come in and stole the show and continued to be our rock for the remainder of the season. We lost other guys in other crucial games but we had other guys step up and do their job. We had two deadlock games in tournaments and twice our grade nine rookie Tyler Reid scored the go-ahead goals. Reid was a grade nine standing 5 feet tall but never backed away from a battle, he earned his stripes and quickly became part of the team. Resilience was built and determination was discovered.  Together this team won and together we lost, regardless of what the scoreboard said. Slowly we started to turn the mess into something more.

     
   The group of guys I got to play with was a group like no other, no one was the same. We had guys that didn't always represent the team in the way we wanted. Although we never left each other behind and anyone who did was not a teammate. We spent a whole afternoon watching a poker game screaming and laughing the whole time. Not because the poker game was that fun but because the company of our teammates was second to none. It's amazing to me how the memories I take away from this team, most them are off the ice. We had guys running from hot tubs into snow banks, we were a team that ordered pizza at 3 am and shared a late night meal while reminiscing about our season. Looking from the outside in I would expect you to see nothing less than a mess. This team showed to me though, we were more than that, we were a beautiful mess. 

   Bluevale Hockey was easily the most fun I had in high school. The friendships which were made and the lessons that were learned will last. We were a team that never had it together but we had the ability together to get it done. At team pictures not one guy forgot their jerseys, two did. This may seem worse but it was actually better we were able to make the picture look more balance and just like that we turned the mess into a beautiful mess. 

   I want to thank the coaches for the opportunity to play for them and Bluevale. I want to thank my teammates for all the times we had and for new lifelong poker buddies. As the 2017 season is upon us it is disappointing to see that students will not get to make the memories that I am so lucky to have.  Bluevale Hockey was a beautiful mess and I'm damn proud I was part of it. 

Noah Rawlinson - December 2017