Tonight it’s all about a whole lot of running with a ball, inside a rink. It’s not indoor soccer. This lacrosse moves at a faster clip and the vulcanized rubber ball can deliver a sting that leaves welts. Noah and I trek across the city to take in the Midget B championship game. Big cousin Hunter is just getting ready to wrap his first season.
We arrive about halfway through the first period and the scoreboard is lit up in favour of our guys – the Dartmouth Bandits. As we walk in, Noah excitedly cries out, ‘hockey’. Grampa Bob and Granma Helen are there. Noah gravitates to them immediately and plops his little butt down next to GH. We keep the edge right up to the intermission. If the Sackville Wolves are doing any howling, it’s in frustration that they can’t get the upper hand.
Noah was only six months old for his first lacrosse experience. We saw the Toronto Nationals play an exhibition game in Halifax. It was lacrosse rock ‘n roll – high decibel tunes shaking the seats. The cousins were there too. Our lad is a confirmed sports enthusiast. He likes to play – hockey, soccer, basketball, baseball – and he likes to watch live. Last night the bike ride home from the park was delayed so we could take a detour and watch 15 minutes of a girl’s soccer game.
Lacrosse is another perpetual motion sport. Sometimes the action is eddying, sometimes flowing in a raging torrent, the ball rippling across sticks, rolling in and out of pockets. Speed, balance, aim and the dipsy-doodle deke will get you a goal. Inattention can get you a stick across the back, or a butt end in the kidney. The players need to be in high vibration mode – alertness and awareness revved up to max.
Noah is following the action. He’s engaged watching the black and blues duke it out. Sticks clash to scoop the ball on a bounce. It’s an up, down, push and pull game – the score never goes beyond a two point spread. There is artful stick play, faking feints and clipped hits out on the floor.
Final period and Noah starts to get restless but still does not want to leave. He jiggles about on my knee and in my arms. We’re counting down the last minutes as the Bandits try and hold on to a one goal lead. Ten seconds left and the play is buzzing around the Bandits’ goal. Their defense does the job and at the buzzer they are the new Midget B champions.
We slip out onto the playing surface to take a couple of photos of the champs just after they receive their individual medals and the team trophy. Noah gives Hunter a high five and a quiet ‘hi’. The team is looking very happy. They’ve got that cat that swallowed the canary glow. It’s a good feel, pumped up with prowess and adrenalin, sweat streaming, the season’s stories crystallizing, becoming legend through the telling.
One of the parents of the players rolls me the game ball to give to Noah. This is an unexpected treasure that he takes in charge right away. I have a sleepy boy in the car as we pull out. He’s talkative on the way home about travel and sports and his new ball.
I tell him about a dark irish green lacrosse ball I had as a kid. He informs me that he’s going to keep his forever and asks where my ball is. I tell him it was a long time ago and it’s gone. He still wants to know where it is. I tell him I just don’t know. For him, it’s very odd that I could just let a ball disappear like that. I do remember how much I enjoyed that ball and what a wicked bounce it had. It wasn’t in the same trajectory league as super balls but it had greater mass and volume and all around was just more substantial.
Noah wants to show his ball to maman. He also wants to get back to Sorel, to Québec and Québec City. He wants to know when we will go and when next he will board a plane because he really, really likes them. When I tell him that for a young boy he’s already been on a lot of planes – to Montréal, Scotland, California, Barbados, Florida – he quickly rejoins that he wants to go to all the countries by plane. Yes, that’s what he wants.
We roll in at nearly 22h00. He is tired but happy. He stashes his new lacrosse ball in his desk for safekeeping until tomorrow and I tuck him in with a soft kiss on his sweet cheeks. In moments he is dreaming and tonight I’m confident he’ll be running, running hard to catch and throw his new ball with a Noah scale lacrosse stick.
Final score: Dartmouth Bandits 7 – Sackville Wolves 6. It’s been a good night out. Thanks Hunter.
