A Different World

Appleby has had a long tradition of great hockey, a tradition that has included boys hockey for more than a century and girls hockey for close to 20 years.

During our centennial celebration last year, the school hosted an invitational start-of-season hockey tournament with separate divisions for both men and women. What could have been a one-time event was so successful that I had the pleasure of watching most the games in the second annual Appleby Invitational Tournament three weeks ago. My youngest son Alec and some of his young cousins accompanied me to some of the games and the intensity, speed and agility was riveting. While standing in the arena and taking in what seemed like mid-season performances, any worries about the NHL lockout vanished. If you have an opportunity, come and watch one of these games. They are really entertaining.

Both Appleby teams acquitted themselves well during the tournament, but the thing that has stuck with me most relates to another team. One of the girls teams was a select team visiting from Moscow. To the best of our knowledge, none of the team members – coaches or players – spoke English, so some of the Russian-speaking Appleby students helped out with translation over the weekend. The women’s final featured the Moscow team versus Appleby. Sadly, we lost with 14 second left in the game, but it was a superb match. (There is a photo in the slideshow on the right of the two teams at the end of the game.)

The incident I remember happened at the start of the game. The Russians were a fairly dominant team during the tournament and expected to win. Appleby took the opening face-off. Our right winger blew by her mark outside, then cut inside the Russian left defense before roofing the puck over the goalie’s right arm. We were up in spectacular fashion after less than 30 seconds.

The Russian coach called over the five girls who were on the ice. He didn’t go into a long diatribe, nor did he bench them. He ordered them off the ice, to go to the dressing room and change. Their tournament was over. I was at the door when the five 14 year-olds (+/-) came off – all of them either in tears, or fighting to hold them back. Everyone in the vicinity was stunned.

For a hockey-mad country like Canada, this was a poignant reminder that different cultures have very different ways of operating. (The 5 girls aren't in the photo.)