One of the rhythms of college sports is that the players we root for are there for four years and then they're gone. It's something that over four decades I've learned not just to live with but also to appreciate. I've always had my favorites, dating back to Pat McInally, and it's sad to see them go but the incoming freshmen usually provide someone new and the show goes on. It's just a part of fandom and something you learn to accept.
I find myself melancholy today not so much because the Gophers lost yesterday but because this normal passage of time is hitting me harder than I think it ever has before. The four seniors on this year's Minnesota women's hockey team have meant a lot to me for the last four years and I'm going to miss them in a way I never have another graduating class in any sport at any of the different places I've been a fan.
You see, I started attending GWH games in the fall of 2010 when Bethany Brausen, Sarah Davis, Baylee Gillanders, and Kelly Terry were all freshmen, along with Ashley Stenerson and Amanda Kessel, who for different reasons were not a part of this year's team. My arrival at Ridder Arena coincided with theirs, more or less, and for now the history of my fandom is the same as their history as players. In a fundamental way they are Gopher women's hockey to me.
The fall of 2010 was a waypoint in a bad time of my life. Other than one six week stretch last summer, I've been unemployed since the fall of 2005, when I had a complete nervous breakdown from job stress. By the time I'd recovered from that I'd been out of work long enough that no one would hire me, especially since I couldn't go back to doing what I had been. I went back to school, finishing my bachelor's degree and, when I still couldn't land a job, getting a master's in accounting in May, 2010. By the time that autumn rolled around it was clear that that had been useless as there was still no one who wanted to hire me into a field which had been devastated by the recession.
So that moment when I started watching this team was one of acute depression for me. I was miserable and casting around for something to latch on to that I could enjoy and become a part of. Fortunately, it became apparent pretty quickly that Gopher women's hockey could be that thing. It certainly hasn't been capable of solving all of my problems but I enjoyed it and could get wrapped up in it with all of the intensity that someone with autism can manage.
After thirty years of being a fan of men's college hockey there had been a growing number of things about that game that disturbed me. So I had switched which Gopher hockey team I gave my primary allegiance to, thinking that I wouldn't enjoy the game on the ice as much but that it would be worth it to be rid of all the crap associated with men's hockey. I quickly learned that the only thing I was wrong about was not liking the actual game as much. Women's hockey in and of itself won me over.
Each in different ways, Brausen, Davis, Gillanders, and Terry were a part of that. There was something about the way each of them played that was a part of why I started to enjoy it so much. One could say that I was simply desperate for anything to latch on to but they were still the ones who filled that hole.
It lasted for four years. Each of them kept getting better, giving me something new to watch them for each season. Brausen never became a big scorer but did become a great leader of people. Davis developed a complete game across the whole surface of the ice while remaining one of the best players I've ever seen on face-offs. Terry was a ferocious forechecker from the first month I watched and became one of the two best defensive forwards I've watched, along with John Madden. And Gillanders grew in so many ways, becoming first a rock solid defensive defenseman and then gaining an asserive confidence to rush the puck; that she scored two goals in her last Frozen Four was a very fitting final statement.
I won't say that I know them as I've barely talked to any of them. I have gotten to know some of their parents, however.
and Brock & Kathy Gillanders have been among a large group of people that have made me feel wanted within the GWH community. It is in no small part due to them that I am comfortable being a part of a large, friendly group. It can be very difficult for people with autism to gain that confidence and they have gone out of their way to make me a part of their gatherings.
And from what I can tell about the players without having really met them is that they are a very appealing bunch to root for. That's true of their play on the ice but also off of it. I can even pinpoint the exact moment when I came to that conclusion. The Power Play Club holds two postgame receptions every year that the players attend. At the first one, the freshmen get called up one by one and interviewed briefly. Then the floor is thrown open for questions, most of which come from their teammates. At the first reception I attended in the fall of 2010, Kelly Terry asked Baylee Gillanders to do her cow impression. I must admit that it is a very good cow impression but it was the interplay between the players that won me over.
In the intervening four years I have become an author. I am as yet unpublished but I have both a collection of short stories and a novel that I am working on. Aside from all of the indirect ways that the changes becoming a fan of this team halped me to go in that direction, there is also a very direct way in which it never would have happened if I hadn't. So they have had a profound impact on my life.
There are plenty of other players on the team that I love to watch and there are other fans and parents that I enjoy getting together with. But this four have been special to me in ways that go far beyond wins and losses. I'm going to miss them a lot and it probably won't ever be quite the same.
