Sacrifice

Chapter 2

Ryan drove home from school and stopped to get subway before practice. He's alone at home while he quickly ate and watched some TSN. He left early for hockey to be first one on the ice and take advantage of extra ice before practice.

As he arrived at the rink he greets his boys, a few of which he's played with since he was 8 years old. The team was really a tight-knit group, almost everyone was best friends with each other.

"Ryan, can you come here? I need to speak with you." He heard his coach say from across the room. Everyone was quiet and watched as Ryan walks over and entered his office which is always an intimidating room to be in.

"Hey bud, don't worry just wanted to touch base and talk about my expectations for you this year. I know you have a mountain of pressure this year to deal with and I have no doubt you will handle all of it. I know we aren't a top team in this league but you're going to have to show up everyday and lead by example and dominate this year if we are going to have any chance at success."

Ryan looks at the coach and smiles. "Thanks Coach, I'm just excited to start the season."

Coach looks at Ryan and says "Listen I know it's your last year and I'm going to try my best to talk to schools that are looking to give you a scholarship. You just have to do your part of working hard at the rink everyday and staying on top of school."

"Ok coach, I appreciate it." Ryan says with a half-smile hiding the embarrassment that even his coach knows he struggles at school. He walks out of the office and goes to his stall to get dressed. Beside him are his two best friends on the team, Logan and John. They also happen to be the three best players on the team, but Ryan was far and away the top player on his team. The team always had a lot of fun in the dressing room all you can hear from anyone is talking and laughter with music playing through the speaker. Everyone gets dressed in their gear and 10 minutes before practice coach comes in to draw up each drill. As he slides his pen all over the white board, no one really knows exactly what he's drawing, just a bunch of lines everywhere. Now that everyone was completely confused on what to do, it was time for practice.

Ryan walked out and felt the cold air on his face and smell the rink, his favorite feeling in the world. As he stepped on the ice, he dumped the pucks out and starts to stickhandle through the pile of pucks for a few minutes, once his forearms were burning, he skated down the ice to the other end of the rink and rips a shot right under the crossbar. Coach stepped onto the ice and now it was time to start the drills. Those extra few minutes Ryan uses before every practice have helped improve his stickhandling to an elite level over the last year. Practice goes as usual, although it was frustrating for Ryan trying to make plays with the weaker players on the team. Brampton had a good core of 6 returning players but the rest of the team could not keep up. Ryan knew this was going to be an issue for the team all year.

After practice the team has a workout in the building next door. Everyone has a chance to quickly get undressed, have a shower and a snack like a bagel or muffins provided by the team. Once everyone is done it's a 3 minute walk over. Ryan always walks over to the gym with Logan and John just to talk about practice and girls, the usual. Today was Monday so its likely to be an easier day of stretching, yoga, and core workout.

At the gym they had a yoga instructor come in for an hour. She was so pretty everyone on the team had a crush on her and she knew it. Ryan, Logan, and John always looked forward to these Mondays. The instructors name was Stacey and as she walked in everyone just stopped and stared.

"Hey guys, everyone get set up your mats and start to get into downward dog," Stacey says with a smile as she gets set up. Everyone on the team says hi and begins to stretch. Nobody wanted to be on her bad side. Yoga was good to take a break from the intense workouts in the gym and practice. The hour went by quickly with everyone stretching and whispering conversations to each other, probably about Stacey.

After yoga Ryan drove to a sushi spot to meet up with his school friends for dinner. They like to go out together whenever they can. Ryan was able to join them because he didn't have any homework after the first day of the semester. As they ate dinner together they talked about their first day of school. Ryan brought up Alyssa from his history class with the guys.

"So I'm sitting by myself in History and this chick comes up to me all smiley and sits beside me. I had to ask what her name was and she said Alyssa I think. She seemed like a nice girl, really pretty too."

All the guys looked around at each other with wide eyes.

"What?" Ryan asks confused looking around.

"Dude. Alyssa Robinson is probably the hottest girl I've ever seen in my life. How did you not know who that was?" Trevor says in shock. Trevor is a smaller Asian boy with a great sense of humor, but not much luck with girls.

"I heard she's a freak if you know what I mean," Kyle says with a big grin.

"I heard she's the type to get attached to a guy right away so watch out" Jason says.

After sushi, Ryan went home and thought about this Alyssa girl he had just met. He couldn't sleep because he was thinking about a bunch of situations and wasn't sure what he thought about Alyssa yet, but he knew one thing, he had to get her number.