Blood bounces on ice

Gil Thorp, 12/15/23

Oh, wow, I think this is the first year we've ever seen ice hockey take its rightful place in the pantheon of Mudlark sports! And it's truly a line up of large, beefy boys signing up to participate. You know, I grew up in Buffalo, a huge hockey town, but the school district didn't run a varsity hockey league because of the liability issues, so instead we had a "club league" that was technically not affiliated with or run by the district, but each team only had students from one school and was coached by one of the school's gym teachers and had pep rallies before big games in our auditorium. The uniforms were a different color from our other teams, though, which I guess provided enough plausible deniability? Anyway, the Valley Conference isn't even doing that sort of charade, though this is the same state where for-profit prisons can legally pit juvenile delinquents against one another on the gridiron, so I guess aggressive tort reform long ago replaced the civil court system with "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

Hi and Lois, 12/15/23