Oh no – My Kids Chose a Minority Sport
You know how kids are – they choose a sport, hobby or pastime and it becomes all-embracing, for a while at least.
This is all fine when they’re into ballet, football, cricket, golf, tennis or what have you, but my ten year old son has chosen ice hockey as his number one sport of choice, which makes life rather awkward to say the least.
At the same time, we’ve always said to all our three children that we’ll back them to the hilt in helping them carry out the sport of their choice. This is, after all, a healthy alternative to iPads, computer games, aspects of the internet and of course, the television. So perhaps my ten year-old is calling our bluff with ice hockey? But, either way, we have to be as good as our word and find a way to let him pursue his interest.
The reason he chose ice hockey is because my husband is originally from Canada and a bit of an ice hockey freak. A perfect day for him is sitting in front of the TV with his Betfair account open gambling on NHL ice hockey games, using his knowledge of the sport to his advantage. Predictably, he tends to favour the Canadian teams over the American ones and this “informs” his gambling apparently! So, I subsequently blame him for our son’s interest in what is something of a “niche” sport in the UK.
Fortunately for us, we live about three quarters of an hour’s drive from the National Ice Centre, in Nottingham – which is also home to the UK’s oldest ice hockey team, the GMB Nottingham Panthers, so ice hockey training is quite far up the agenda here as you can probably imagine. There are great programmes for children’s development and we’re up and running (and queuing up the M1 once a week).
When your kids choose a minority sport, it can be a pain. So be careful what you promise. We promised we’d do whatever it takes and now we’re reaping the rewards, with some quite obvious downsides too. But at least it’s active, it’s social and crucially for us – it’s not electronic in any way.
Post written by a mother of an ice hockey fan