So, you’re asking about HPHL Hockey? Yeah, I’ve got a story about that. It’s one of those things you kinda fall into, and then you look back and just shake your head, sometimes with a laugh, sometimes not so much.
It all started when my son, let’s call him Sam, suddenly decided he was destined for hockey greatness. One minute it was dinosaurs, the next, he’s taping up a broom to use as a hockey stick in the living room. So, I did what any parent would do, I started looking around for local options. And that’s when HPHL Hockey popped up. The name sounded decent enough, maybe a bit official, even.
My First Brush with the System
First thing was trying to sign him up. Their website, oh boy. It looked like it hadn’t been touched since the early days of the internet. Broken links, information from three seasons ago. I eventually found a contact email, sent a message, and waited. And waited. Finally, a week later, a reply! Short, a bit cryptic, with a PDF form attached that looked like it had been photocopied a hundred times. That was my first taste of the HPHL experience, my initial “practice run,” if you will.
We got the form filled out, figured out the fee, which wasn’t exactly cheap, mind you. Then came the equipment list. Everything had to be a specific brand or bought through their “approved vendor,” which, surprise surprise, was a bit pricier than everywhere else. I remember thinking, “Okay, this is getting interesting.”
- The helmet hunt – took us three stores to find the “right” model.
- Skates – “Make sure they’re sharpened by our guy,” the email said. Who was their guy? Another mystery.
- The “mandatory” HPHL practice jersey – an extra fifty bucks right there.
It felt less like signing up for a kids’ hockey league and more like navigating some weird bureaucratic maze. My wife kept saying, “Are you sure about this?” And I’d say, “Well, Sam’s really excited. Let’s just see.”
The On-Ice “Practice”
Then came the actual on-ice stuff. The first practice was… memorable. Kids everywhere, most of them looking as bewildered as Sam. The coaches, bless their hearts, seemed well-meaning but totally overwhelmed. It was like organized chaos, heavy on the chaos part. Drills would start, then stop, then change. One coach would say one thing, another would contradict him. I spent most of the time just trying to figure out what Sam was supposed to be doing.
The games weren’t much different. More parental shouting than actual strategy, it felt like. And the refereeing? Let’s just say the interpretation of rules was… flexible. I saw one game where a kid basically sat on the puck for a good ten seconds, and everyone just sort of watched. Good times.
I even volunteered to help with the time clock once. That was an eye-opener. The “system” was an old notepad and a stopwatch that kept sticking. The guy who was supposed to show me the ropes, a fella named Gary, spent half the time complaining about the league president, who, it turned out, was also the treasurer and the head scheduler. It was basically a one-man show, and that one man was clearly juggling too many pucks.
This whole HPHL thing, it was a real lesson. You see this name, this league, and you think there’s this big organization behind it. But dig a little, and you find it’s often just a few people, probably volunteers, running around like crazy, trying to keep the whole thing from falling apart. It’s like a lot of things in life, really. Looks shiny on the outside, but the inner workings are a tangled mess of good intentions and not enough resources, or maybe just not enough clue.
We stuck it out for that one season. Sam made a couple of friends, and he did learn to skate better, mostly by trying to avoid collisions, I think. But the next year? We found a different program. A bit more organized, a lot less like a comedy sketch.
So, that was my practice with HPHL Hockey. It wasn’t a complete disaster, more like a series of small, bewildering hurdles. And hey, it gave me a story to tell, right? Sometimes, that’s the best you get out of these things.
