Bridget McGuire's Filling Station: Girls Love Hockey Too

Everyone knows that I love football. Especially Notre Dame football. But you may not know that I love hockey as well. There are three sports, well ... three professional sports ... that I love, and they include football, hockey, and baseball. As the 2011 Twitter Hockey Hottie contest gets ramped up, I thought I talk today a little bit about my love for hockey.

Growing up in Los Angeles, I was not a huge hockey fan. One of my high school friends, Leslie, her family had season tickets to the L.A. Kings, and I learned a lot from her. Including, but not limited to: DO NOT turn around and talk to Gretzky's wife DURING the game ... as when she was doing that she got hit in the back of the head with a puck and had to be rushed to the ER for stitches! LOL

So when I got to Notre Dame for my freshman year, I already had some knowledge of hockey, and then I met Mike Russo. He was one of the goalies for the ND Hockey team, and had played hockey in High School in St. Louis at CBC. He always wore his High School Letterman jacket around campus, and maybe that's what caught my eye, that purple jacket, but I soon rearranged my walking paths so that I would run into him on my way to and from class. We chatted a lot, running into each other like that, freshman year, but I never did get up the nerve to ask him out. And freshman year my friends and I really didn't go to many hockey games. It was enough of a challenge just getting used to being so far away from home, and trying to master classes, not a whole lot of extracurricular activities happened freshman year!

At the end of the summer after freshman year in college, my parents told me that we were moving to St. Louis. St. Louis?? What?? I was crushed. I had four days to say goodbye to my friends before I headed back to college and I could not believe that my parents were doing this to me!! (Typical 18 year old reaction, right?)

And then everything gets put into perspective.

When I got back to campus that first day of sophomore year, I picked up a copy of the first "Observer" of the school year ... the school paper. And there it was on the front page. Freshman, Mike Russo dies.

I think all of the blood rushed out of my face. My friends had tried to get to me before I got a paper, but they didn't make it. Boy, didn't I feel stupid that I never asked him out ... that I was too shy to take the first step. Talk about missed opportunities. I was so upset, I could not even go to the memorial that the school had for him. I was absolutely crushed. I really had no intention of EVER going to a hockey game ever again. All it did was remind me of him.

But then, life has a way of taking care of things. Flash forward to Junior year. My roommate got engaged in November and decided to move off campus with her fiance, and left me needing a roommate. So the rector of our dorm gave me a list of all of the girls from our dorm who were in London for the fall semester and asked me if I knew any of them. I did recognize this one girl (Cara), and I knew we had a friend in common ... Carl, who was (you guessed it) a hockey player ... so I figured she would be okay. And so I picked Cara!

I ran into Carl at the dining hall and told him that Cara and I were going to be roommates the next semester, and his reaction was less than positive. He said ... "Uh, Cara? Really? Oh my." And I said ... "What do you mean??" He replied ... "Well, you are the eternally HAPPY person, and she is the eternally CRABBY person!"

And thus started a wonderful friendship between Cara and I! For the record, she and I were perfect roommates. We were the perfect mix of happy and crabby, and we had a wonderful time that semester! In fact, to this day, we are still the best of friends, she was in my wedding, and she is Offspring #2's God Mother! Okay ... back to the story!

Living with Cara that semester ... she and Carl got me back to going to hockey games again. And then, during my senior year, my Dad let me bring his VERY nice camera, with a telephoto lens, to school with me and I started taking pictures at sporting events. First at football games ... and then at hockey games. I started making copies and enlarging some of good pictures to give to the players, and word got back to the hockey coach of how good my pics were, and I got invited to ride on the team bus with the team and be the team photographer!!

Well, shy me passed on that offer ... but I did road trip to as many games as I could and took TONS of pics.

Watching the game through my camera developed my love for the game, and I have loved it ever since. That, and getting to know quite a few of the guys through my pictures, and getting to know the "characters" that hockey players are ... it was a good thing!

And then, after I graduated from Notre Dame, I got a job doing sales for a local professional soccer team in St. Louis. The best part of that job was two-fold. First ... the soccer team played in The Arena, where the St. Louis Blues played, and our offices opened out onto the top row of the arena ... so I cannot tell you how many hockey games we got to watch from up there!! (shhhh!) And secondly, from hanging out with the soccer players at the drinking establishments near The Arena, we got to meet and get to know a ton of the Blues players ... Hull, Shanahan, CuJo, Jeff Brown ... the list goes on. It was truly a great opportunity (the job that is) and a very fun time in my life!

(Photo at right is Wayne Gretzky's daughter ...)

I still think of Mike every time I go to a hockey game. I probably always will. And though I don't have as much time as I used to go to, or even watch hockey games ... I still thoroughly enjoy it every chance I get.

So there's the roundabout story of my love for hockey! I have many more hockey stories about my friends on the hockey team ... but some of those *wink* will have to remain unsaid! LOL

Cheers!