Our winter weather continues to build character. That is the only good thing I can say about the freezing rain, snow, ice, blowing snow, glare ice, blizzards and cold we have been experiencing in recent weeks.
Where, I wonder, are the gentle snowfalls of my childhood?
How did we ever spend days and nights skating on outdoor rinks? Were we hardier then because we were younger, or has memory dimmed whatever cold and discomfort we may have felt?
When I was in my senior years at the Fort William Collegiate Institute, as my high school was so grandly called, one of our winter pastimes was playing broomball. We played in fair weather or foul on an outdoor rink. Spectators cheered from the surrounding snow banks.
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Our equipment consisted of the warmest clothes we owned, whatever we could put on our feet that was warm but provided some leverage, a cut-off kitchen broom and a ball of some sort. We thought we had the world by the tail.
Like everything else, the game has changed. I was down at our town’s indoor rink recently to watch a broomball clinic run by Jennifer Schmidt of Broomball Saskatchewan.
A broomball coach in Moose Jaw, she was running the all-day clinic for students in Grades 4 to 12 at the Eston school.
The game she told me about is not quite the game I played. Today’s broomball players tend to play on inside rinks rather than in the cold of the outdoors. They have specialized equipment and wear protective gear such as helmets, elbow and shin pads.
The shoes cost from $55 to $70, she told me, and the brooms run about $15.
Rather than the pickup games we used to play, the sport is now more organized with leagues and rule books and regular play and tournaments, and coaches to make sure players play the game the “right” way.
The group I watched was a pretty serious bunch.
There wasn’t any friendly banter, smiles or laughter.
As I left the rink, I found myself thinking back to the group I played broomball with. We didn’t have fancy shoes to keep us from falling, and our brooms were pretty shoddy compared to what they use today. But as I recall, and I don’t think I’m looking back through rose-colored glasses, the games were a lot of fun, without the pressure to “do it right.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if we’re really doing our kids a favor by having every activity they are involved in organized for them by adults and made costly for their parents by the necessity of buying special equipment, paying high-priced rink fees and shelling out money for road trips and out of town tournaments.
Not that some of that isn’t fine, but have we gone just a bit overboard?
