4. CHAPTER FOUR
ROWAN
Sport Leadership and Administration meets at nine on Fridays in a room with tables instead of desks, which means everybody can see everybody else’s laptop and there’s nowhere to hide when Professor Novak starts walking around.
He stops at the end of my table twenty minutes into class.
“Laurens.”
I look up. “Yeah.”
“Span of control. Camden’s athletic department. Who reports directly to the AD?”
“Four senior associates. Compliance and the business office technically go straight to him too, so six.”
“Too many?”
I think about the eleven weeks I spent in the facilities office last summer watching six people try to get decisions through one man. “Depends whether he wants to know things or make things happen.”
Novak looks at me for a second. “That’s the distinction.”
Then he keeps walking.
I go back to my notes.
I like this class. I like most of the classes in this degree, actually.
That would probably be more useful if liking the work automatically told me what I wanted to do with it.
By the end of Capstone two hours later, Professor Kwan wants three job positions I could realistically see myself taking after graduation and one informational interview with somebody already doing one of them scheduled before February.
It should be easy. I have a degree coming in May, a 3.6 GPA, four years inside a Division I athletic department, eleven weeks of facilities experience, and a former supervisor who would answer the phone if I called him.
I am, according to Professor Kwan, “extremely employable.”
Which is apparently different from knowing what the fuck I want to do.
I shut my laptop when she dismisses us but stay in my chair while the room clears around me.
Marcus is still talking about Grand Rapids.
He interned with their organization last summer and thinks there’s an offer coming after graduation.
Two people behind me are comparing apartments in Charlotte.
Somebody near the door has already accepted a job in Nashville.
Everybody has a sentence.
I’m going to Grand Rapids.
I’m applying in Charlotte.
I start in June.
Mine is: I might stay.
I already said that one out loud at Hawthorne.
The second I mentioned doing my master’s, Stanley nearly knocked over his drink. Benson started asking about applications. Percy looked relieved. I told them I still had eligibility because of the year I lost to my shoulder and that I could probably play another season. Maybe two.
All of that is true.
It still feels weird when I think of it as a plan.
I put my laptop in my bag and leave.
There are a little over three hours until I have to be at the rink, so I get a sandwich from the union and take one of the tables along the windows. Snow has been pushed into dirty piles along the sidewalks outside, and everybody crossing the quad has their head down against the wind.
I open my laptop. Camden’s graduate program is still sitting in one tab from the last time I looked at it. I leave it alone and open the job board instead.
Kwan wants three positions.
Event Operations Coordinator — Detroit.
Full-time. Game-day operations, facility setup, staffing, vendor coordination, event conversion. Nights and weekends. Bachelor’s degree required. One year of related experience preferred.
It’s hockey without playing hockey.
I scroll down to the salary.
Forty-four thousand to start.
Not great. Not impossible. Detroit is less than three hours from Camden, and I understand almost everything in the job description without having to look any of it up.
I could do this. More than that, I could probably get an interview. I read the listing again. Then I hit Save instead of Apply. The little icon changes, and I sit there looking at it like that counts as progress.
It doesn’t.
I save two more positions because Kwan asked for three, but I barely read either one long enough to picture myself doing it. Assignment technically almost complete. Problem unchanged.
For four years, everything has had a next thing attached to it. Fall semester becomes spring semester. Spring becomes summer training. Summer becomes another season. There’s always another schedule, another class, another game, another date already sitting on the calendar.
Now people keep asking what I’m doing after May like there’s supposed to be another box waiting for me and I just haven’t filled it in yet.
There isn’t.
I have to pick one.
My eyes drift toward the tab behind the job board.
Camden University.
Master of Science in Sport Administration.
I click it.
Thirty-three credits. Graduate assistantships available. Fall admission deadline: March first.
I’ve already confirmed the hockey side with compliance. I lost my freshman season to the shoulder surgery, so I have eligibility left. Staying is possible.
That part is easy. I scroll farther down.
Transcript. Two letters of recommendation. Résumé. Statement of purpose — five hundred to seven hundred and fifty words explaining my professional goals and why the program fits them.
I stop there.
Professional goals.
The rest of the application doesn’t bother me. Kwan is already making us redo our résumés. Novak would probably write a recommendation. Coach Fuller would too if I asked him.
Five hundred words shouldn’t be the difficult part.
I click into the application anyway. There’s a blank box for the statement.
I stare at it for a while. Nothing useful shows up.
Eventually I close it. March first is seven weeks away.
Plenty of time. I tell myself that like the deadline is the problem.
My phone buzzes beside the computer.
Benson: Leaving in 20.
Me: Yeah.
I close the graduate page and shut the laptop.
The first Friday game with students back feels nothing like the games we played over Christmas break.
Those felt like practices somebody sold tickets to.
You could hear individual people from the ice.
Tonight, the student section is already full when we come out for warmups, the band is set up in the corner, and the drum starts before I make it through my first lap.
Stanley glides past the bench with both arms stretched out.
“This,” he yells, “is what I’m talking about.”
Blue skates past him. “Warm up.”
“I am so fucking warm right now.”
I laugh and keep moving.
Benson taps both posts before he starts. Percy stretches in the crease. Mackey and I go through the same puck-behind-the-net routine we’ve done before every game since November, except on the second rep he changes his angle.
I look once. Then again. Far side. I hit him clean.
He grins. “Better.”
“Don’t start.”
“Positive reinforcement.”
“I don’t need it.”
“You definitely do.”
I send the next puck harder than I need to.
When I circle back toward the tunnel, two men in dark jackets are standing along the glass with Camden credentials around their necks. One is talking to Coach.
I recognize his face, not his name. I’ve seen enough NHL and AHL people around here over the last few years to know what he is.
Scout.
Probably here for Benson. Maybe Stanley. Blue gets attention too.
I skate past. Fuller catches my eye for half a second before turning back to the guy.
A few days ago, after practice, he mentioned that somebody had asked what I was doing next year.
I told him I didn’t know.
He said, Figured.
That was the whole conversation. It could mean nothing.
Pro hockey works like that for guys like me. You don’t get drafted, so nobody builds a plan around you. Maybe somebody watches enough tape and likes something. Maybe there’s a development camp. Maybe an AHL club needs somebody in July. Maybe nothing happens.
I stopped waiting for that call a long time ago.
Tonight, Penn State is enough. They come out heavy, and for the first eight minutes nobody gets clean possession long enough to do much with it. Then Stanley scores from almost exactly where Aspen told him to stop shooting.
Theo moves it over. Stanley gets the puck outside the dots instead of driving in and lets it go.
It catches a defenseman’s shin and changes direction.
In.
Stanley celebrates like he planned every inch of it.
When he gets back to the bench, Benson grabs the top of his jersey.
“Aspen is going to kill you.”
Stanley points at the scoreboard. “One-nothing.”
“You shot from the wall.”
“It went in.”
Aspen is going to hate that argument.
Stanley does it again in the second, still farther outside than she wants him. He later claims he was “basically in the slot.”
He was not.
The game opens up after that. Benson gets one off the rush. Blue creates another by carrying clean through the left side. Tate gets the fifth. Percy makes one save late in the second that keeps Penn State from making the whole thing uncomfortable.
Five-two.
I don’t get a point. What I get is four retrievals in the third where I reach the puck without already knowing where I’m sending it.
Two still go up the wall. One goes behind the net to Mackey.
One I keep.
That one feels the best.
I look once. Look again. Pressure comes from my right, the middle stays open, and this time when I take it, I know why I’m taking it.
Nobody cheers. Nobody notices. By the time I hit the neutral zone, the student section is yelling about something else.
Mackey taps my shin with his stick when I get back to the bench. Fuller gives me one nod, and Percy says, “Better,” after the whistle.
That’s enough.
That’s a good night.
The locker room after a win is loud enough that I have to lean toward Mackey to hear him. Stanley is on the bench in his underwear before most of us have our skates off.
“I would like to address the room. I scored twice.”
Blue looks up. “We were there.”
Stanley puts up two fingers. “Twice. After being informed, in writing, by my own girlfriend that I need to improve basically every part of my offensive game.”
Benson throws a roll of tape at him. It hits Stanley in the chest, and he catches it.
“Jealousy.”
“Get dressed.”
“I’m inspiring people.”
“You’re half naked.”
Stanley smirks. “Some people find that inspiring.”