My story - Bullied by Hockey Coach

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A little backstory first...

As the son of Italian immigrants, my team sports interest gravitated (unnaturally) towards hockey (and not soccer).

On evenings/weekends, we would use discarded sofa pillows as goalie pads, and discarded windshield washer fluid bottles as makeshift goal posts and played road hockey on little-used side streets with the un-forgiving orange ball.

All us kids thought of was making the NHL .  Never really having the luxury of attending hockey school (that was only for the rich kids), honing our skills consisted of going to the park and use the outdoor hockey rink.

The year was 1984, Pee-Wee house league was all i was able to make, but we had a power house of players , and a strict (but very good Coach) and an assistant coach who could bring out the best in you.

The coach claimed to be a cousin of a very well-known NHL player.  Practices were hard, emphasis on skating till at least one player would vomit( from the early morning practices at Arena Hebert and Arena St-Leonard, now known as Arena Roberto Luongo and Arena Martin Brodeur, respectively).

Discipline and yelling were the main tools used to get us to perform every shift at 100%.

Now for the bullying part....

In January we entered a tournament  (Longueuil) and managed to make it quite deep.

We were leading the game 2-1, and with 1 minute left in the game, the opposing team managed to get the referee to call a penalty: on me: for illegal use of the stick.

Apparently there is a rule which prohibits having different color of tape on the stick.  I had black stick tape on the blade, with some remnants of red stick tape on the lower shaft of the stick.

With me in the box, and their goalie pulled, the opposing team managed to score.

Heading into the room for intermission , the coach goes into a tirade....against me for causing the goal.

What happens next may be the pivotal point in my life which may have molded me into the person I am toady:

The coach takes my stick and breaks it with his foot.

Needless to say we were all shocked, and i literally felt the locker room walls collapsing on me.

We obviously lost the game within 30 seconds of starting the overtime.

Although the coach apologized the next day and bought me a new Titan stick, the effects of that event do haunt me still to this day.

I often wonder if this event is what has made me into a detail-oriented individual, a meticulous observer, a work-ethic-beyond-reproach type.

All i know, is that this is my bullying story.