Passion is a funny thing. It can drive you to travel the world, to dedicate your life to a cause, and it drove me to get to The Goggin at 7:30 in the morning. We were playing Michigan State of all teams. It was not a huge game, it was not a particularly important game, but it was a Miami hockey game, and that was enough to get me to drag myself out of bed and walk to The Goggin before the sun rose.
For those of you who have not been to The Goggin early in the morning, it really is a tranquil place. Walking in while the lights are still off, I feel incredibly peaceful as I begin what will become a very long and tiring day. Unsurprisingly, there is no one else in line; in fact no one else is walking around except for a few employees. I set my stuff down and take a deep breath. I love the Goggin early in the morning. There is just me, the ice, and lots of hope for the evening game. There are some young girls in the rinks practicing figure skating to an old show tune and the place becomes filled with life for a few brief moments while the song plays. And then, again, silence. The cold linoleum tiled floor offers little comfort, but the life on the ice, that is the true Goggin. It is not the bricks, the stairs, or even the ice that make that building what it is, but the things that happen there. It is the games and the skaters on the ice this define that building; it is the little kids running around with excitement before they take their beginning classes.
I have never been able to get my homework done in line. I spend on average seven hours in line for a hockey game, and never manage to do any work. So this seems an ample opportunity to finally accomplish something. My productivity lasts less than half an hour. I have one friend who is almost always the first person there. She is a fiery, passionate person who loves hockey and dedicates her entire weekends to the RedHawks as well when the games are at home. In fact, she has probably motivated most of us in our “Hockey Family” to truly appreciate RedHawk Hockey. She arrives at 8:00 and from that point on, I do not do any more work. She walks up wrapped in a Wall-e blanket, her sweatshirt hood pulled above her head, and carrying a pillow wrapped in a green pillowcase. If you want to see true Miami Hockey fans, don’t wait for the game to start, come early in the morning when there are two people sitting at the top of the stairs, curled up in balls trying to sleep.
Time in line is a chance to socialize and catch up with friends. It is a break from busy work schedules, classes, and stress. We sit together with shared hopes and excitement and create strong bonds and friendships. We realized last year that for our entire time here, the people who have been most dedicated to RedHawk Hockey, who have showed up and sat in the same seats for years, waited for hours and hours in The Goggin, were always the same people. So we began talking and spending our time together rather than apart, eventually creating the network that is now our “Hockey Family.” We spend all day together in line waiting to get our wristbands and sprint to back to our respective seats. We still keep our places, the same seats we have sat in for years, but now we have a network, our Family, spread about the arena to look at, yell to, and with whom we can share silent jokes and looks during the game. But I should get back to that particular day.
My friend and I watch as little kids flood into the building. Children run up and down the stairs and hallways laughing and screaming while their parents follow in tow. We get looks of surprise, approval, and disbelief as they follow their children to take them to their lessons. I recognize some of the kids from the entertainment in between periods, especially one boy who is the only male in a figure skating class. I happen to think he has the best trick of all. He manages to waddle forward on the ice, waver a little, and then bend over and put his hands on the ice as he basically uses four limbs to stabilize himself while moving. It is impossible not to smile while watching this kid. Other kids run around with miniature hockey sticks hitting pucks down the hallway while girls go up to the pictures of the synchronized skaters and admire the sparkling costumes and twinkling smiles. There is so much life and hope, and excitement in this building not just for the nightly hockey game, but for future games, and future dreams and aspirations. The boys who want to play Miami hockey and the girls who want to skate like the synchronized skating team are as much a part of this building as the fans who sit here in the morning watching them.
More of the “Family” shows up throughout the day. In fact the first group of people who were not a part of the family shows up at noon, four and a half hours after I first entered the building. The line does not really grow until 3:30. But that is the nature of lines in the arena. If you come with the masses, you take a risk. By the 6:30 on our side of the arena, half an hour before they hand out wristbands, the line extends down the stairs, out the door, and all the way to the parking garage across from The Goggin. There are limited seats in the arena and the lines are so dense that only those inside the arena have a chance at seats. The others will have to stand in the back for the entire game.
We spend our time talking, watching movies and coming up with random ideas and innovations. For example opening a food station somewhere in the building while the people are in line seems like a very lucrative plan, and yet the school has not, nor has an aspiring entrepreneur. And sometimes we come up with crazier ideas, inspired by lack of sleep and hours on end of fluorescent lights gleaming off linoleum tiles, such as ordering thousands of foam blocks, filling the lobby with them, and jumping from the second floor into the soft, foamy glory. Eventually though, slowly or quickly, time passes in The Goggin. The lines become more crowded and people get angry as others join their friends, or come back to relieve others from waiting shifts. It is a tense balancing act, maintaining order and sanity in that line, with all of the emotions built up in hundreds of fans, but we make it work.
We celebrate my friend’s birthday at this particular game so time passes fairly quickly. We sing much to her chagrin, eat cake and gluten free cupcakes (which for the record were as delicious as normal cupcakes), and joke with her for turning thirteen (one of the staff workers once told her that based on her looks, she could not be more than twelve years old). We work out runners who will get seats, laugh a little at new students who know little about hockey, and drop our jaws as one girl walks in wearing a rainbow colored poncho, short neon orange shorts, and neon green plastic sun glasses. This oddity is more descriptive of the school as a whole than The Goggin in particular.
We get our wristbands, rush into our seats and finally realize our exhaustion. After a little under twelve hours of waiting, we get to our seats feeling weak and tired. We sit down and wait as the arena fills up and get our second wind as soon as the team skates out onto the ice. There is no exhaustion during the game, just adrenaline and exhilaration. The games themselves are incredible and individual. I could not possibly describe them in this post, article, whatever this stream of consciousness is, but we dedicate our weekends to them. We watch as our classmates, who have devoted their lives to hockey, play for their pride and futures. We watch as our school’s most successful team (currently) vies for another opportunity to go to the NCAA championships and finally win the title that we deserve. Our moods on “hockey weekends” are often decided by the outcomes of the games. And sometimes, fifteen hours in The Goggin ends in dissatisfaction.
We lost that game to Michigan State 3-2 in overtime. After an incredible comeback to tie the game, the Spartans managed to break through our defense and get one last shot through our goal. Heartbroken, our fans felt anguish wash over them as our long day of waiting ended in defeat. Most left, but the Family stayed in our sections and claped for the team as they circle around and finally skate off the ice. In victory or defeat, we are Miami Hockey fans and we support our team. We may get frustrated, we may get upset, and we may feel that our whole night has been ruined. But in the end, as we sat together in Buffalo Wild Wings that night and blamed “Poncho Girl” for everything, laughing away our disappointment, we all knew that we would be there to do it again at the next game and the next, for the rest of the season.
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