Bryan Gruley: Starvation lake

My mom started inviting him to stay for dinner. He fell in love with her Swiss steak and mashed potatoes. I wished he’d fall in love with Mom.

Two years later, he was asked to coach the River Rats, Starvation’s travel squad, with five teams at different age levels. The Rats had consistently won their fair share against northern Michigan competition, but they’d never been able to skate with the powerhouses from Detroit-the Pipefitters, Evangelista Drywall, Capraro’s Pizza, Panorama Engineering. Year after year, a Rats team emerged victorious from the state regionals thinking they were the ones who would finally eliminate one of the Detroit squads, and each time, they got crushed. It wasn’t only that the Detroiters were bigger and faster, which they were. They just seemed to know something about hockey that we didn’t. When they stepped onto the ice before the game, none of them even looked at us warming up at the other end.

Blackburn took over the Rats team for nine-and ten-year-olds. The way it worked, if he did well, he’d keep coaching that same group of boys as we rose through the older leagues. We had our first practice at the town’s semi-indoor rink. There was a roof and two sides, but the other two sides were open to the elements. The wind cutting through barely ruffled the slicked-back hair on Blackburn’s hatless head. He gathered us around him at center ice, standing still and straight as a goalpost while we fidgeted and tottered on our blades, our baggy jerseys drooping to our knees, our helmets like fishbowls on our heads. He knew most of us, of course, but he acted as if he’d never seen us before. “The Hungry River Rats, eh?” he said. “You don’t look so hungry to me. But we’ll get you there. We’ll do what we’ve got to do to reach the ultimate goal.” He paused. “There are goals”-he pointed at one of the nets-“and there are goals. I’m talking about the ultimate goal. Does anyone understand?”

We knew ultimate. Soupy had started us using the word as a substitute for “cool.” Bobby Orr was the ultimate. Whoppers with cheese were the ultimate. Still, we stood there dumbly. Coach skated a little circle around us, sizing us up. He stopped where he’d begun and propped his stick up straight on the edge of its blade, the butt end scraping his chin. His eyes fell on mine.

“Gus?”

“Yeah.”

“No, Gus. ‘Yes, Coach.’”

It startled me. He’d come to Sunday dinner plenty of times without ever correcting the way I addressed him. “Uh, yes, Coach,” I said.

“Come on, Gus. You know ‘ultimate.’ Didn’t you just say the other day that your mother’s mashed potatoes were the ‘ultimate’?”

The others tittered. I felt uncomfortable. “To play hockey?” I said.

“Of course we’re here to play hockey, Gus, or you wouldn’t be out here in these goofy outfits.”

I ventured again, “To play good hockey?”

“Well, we’ll certainly have to play good to reach the ultimate goal, but first we have to know what it is. Can anybody help me?”

Again, silence. Then: “To win?”

It was Soupy.

“Alden Campbell,” Coach said. “You’re quite a smooth skater, son. Like a swan. Anybody ever tell you that?”

“Nope-I mean, no, Coach.”

“From now on, you’re the swan-Swanny. That all right with you?”

“I don’t know, Coach.”

“What’s the ultimate goal, Swanny?”

“To win, Coach.”

“To win what? A game? Two games?”

“All the games, Coach.”

Blackburn shook his head. “No. Not all the games.” He stopped and looked around again, catching each of us by the eyes. I felt as if he was about to tell us a secret. “The ultimate goal, boys, is to win one game. One game.” He held up a finger. “That one game, boys, is the Michigan state championship final. Of course we’re going to have to win a few others on the way. And we’re going to have to lose some, too. But that’s all right. Did you hear me? That’s all right. Because losing’s good for winning, boys. Hear me? Losing is good for winning. We’re going to lose some, and then we’re going to win. And we’re going to win that one game. The state championship.” He waited for it to sink in. “Understand?”

“Yes, Coach,” we answered in unison.

He grabbed the whistle dangling at his neck and blew a short blast. “OK,” he said. “Let’s skate.”

A year later, our parents called a meeting. They weren’t happy with Coach Blackburn. He wasn’t the friendly, easygoing guy they’d laughed and drank with at Make-Believe Gardens. He’d had the gall to ban the parents from watching practices. He told them he didn’t want their kids looking to their mommies and daddies for help when Coach was making us skate endless circles and sprints and stops-and-starts without ever once putting a stick to a puck. He’d go around before those no-puck practices and put short stacks of pucks at each face-off dot. We weren’t allowed to touch them. “Dying for those biscuits, eh?” he would say. “Makes you hungry.” Word got back to the parents that a few of us had lost our breakfasts out there.

Worse for our moms and dads, we weren’t winning. We had finished that first season under Coach 23–27 and didn’t make the state playoffs. The parents blamed Coach, of course. For skating us without pucks. For making us play a defensive scheme he called the “Rat Trap” that slowed the game and kept us from scoring many goals. For inviting top-notch teams from Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and, scariest of all, Detroit, to come up and play us on weekends. In the past, the Rats had avoided the Detroit teams until the state playoffs, but Coach said that only by playing those great teams repeatedly could we learn and then exploit their weaknesses. Of course, every time they beat us by six or seven goals, he reassured us that losing was good for winning.

But what really had the parents in a lather was that Coach had begun to recruit players from outside Starvation. On a low rise behind his cabin he’d built three small plankboard houses where those out-of-town players could board from September to May. He called the buildings and the players “billets.” Billets were common in Canada, brand-new to northern Michigan. The day before the parents called their meeting, Blackburn had cut a local player, Jeff Champagne, in favor of a billet from Racine, Wisconsin, named Teddy Boynton.

The parents assembled around the picnic tables in the snack bar at our town rink. My mother sat at a table in the back. The smells of mustard and popcorn wafted on the air. Don Champagne, Jeff’s father, spoke first. “This is our town and our rink that we built with our own hard-earned dollars, and we don’t need a bunch of out-of-town folks who didn’t put a dime into our rink,” he said. “The River Rats ought to be players from Starvation Lake, and Starvation Lake only.”

Soupy and I and the rest of the River Rats waited outside, as Coach had instructed, but we peeked and eavesdropped through the cracks in the door, as Coach no doubt had expected. He sat alone at a table facing the parents and listened, wordless, as one parent after another stood to complain about the billets, the no-puck practices, the Rat Trap. Just about everyone had something to say, except my own mother, which wasn’t at all like her.

When every argument had been repeated two or three times, Coach smiled and placed his hands flat on the table. “Folks,” he said. “First, I’d like to apologize for a little lapse in communication. It’s a new season. You’re all welcome to come watch practices. If the boys forgot to mention that, that’s my fault.” Outside, we snickered; Coach hadn’t said a word to us about lifting the practice ban. “Second, no-puck practices will be more the exception than the rule this year. Your sons are all fine athletes, but, let’s face it, they weren’t in the best physical shape. Maybe too much of the pop and potato chips, eh?” He winked. “Hockey takes a lot of stamina, and the only way to build that stamina-the only way I know-is skating. This year, though, the kids’ll be seeing more pucks. After all, you’re right, the puck’s a pretty big part of the game.” A few parents chuckled.