Hooked on Hockey
David Martin
We can't all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by.
"Stuff a sock down your kid's throat!" That was the cry I heard one night directed at my father as I once again stood in the cold Clarkson College hockey arena and cheered for the other team.
Clarkson College, now Clarkson University, is a small post-secondary institution in Potsdam, New York. Known for its engineering school, Clarkson is even better known for its hockey team.
For over sixty years, the Golden Knights have been a perennial top-ranked hockey power. As a Division I NCAA team, Clarkson often contends for top collegiate honors.
I grew up in Potsdam in the 1950s and 60s watching the Clarkson hockey team. My dad taught at the university and every year he would buy a pair of season tickets, which he shared with my brother and me.
When you grow up in a small town, hockey night at the local college is a big deal. Walker Arena barely had room for 2,000 people so it was packed to the rafters for every game.
The building was full of Clarkson students, residents from the town, and faculty members and their families. And everyone was cheering wildly for their local heroes. Everyone, that is, except me. I was cheering for the other team.
I'm not sure what started me on my quest for infamy. After all, what did I possibly have to gain by being the only person in Potsdam cheering against the hometown college team?
I think it started out as an assertion of my Canadian identity. We had moved to Potsdam from Canada in 1957 when I was seven years old and, as long as I lived there, I still considered myself Canadian.
So when teams from Canadian universities like McGill, Queen's and the University of Toronto came to play Clarkson, I felt that it was my duty to support the Canadian team. Never mind that back then ninety percent of the Clarkson players were Canadian; in my mind they were the American team and I was therefore duty-bound to cheer against them.
But that initial inspiration soon gave way to a different motivation. For a kid, it just became fun to be different, to be the crazy kid who stood and cheered when the other team scored and everyone else fell silent. So I started supporting all the visiting teams, even the other American ones.
I liked taking on the role of the outcast, the miscreant, the anti-fan. It granted me a unique status, albeit one with certain risks.
"There's Martin's kid again," one adult fan might say. "Too bad he can't get him to shut up."
But my dad never intervened. He may have been slightly embarrassed by his son's antics. But he never told me to stop and sometimes I'm sure I saw a smile cross his lips when I jumped out of my seat cheering a team like Princeton or Boston College or Michigan when they scored.
But this wasn't just an impish gesture on my part. I think it also appealed to my juvenile sense of fairness. It just didn't seem right that the visiting team would be drowned in cheers and noise when scored upon, but be greeted with nothing but silence when they managed to score one themselves.
So I did my best to be a one-kid cheering section for the other team to let them know that they had fans, or at least one fan, too. I celebrated their victories and I suffered their losses as if they were my own.
As I grew into my teenage years, I gave up my role as the visiting team's cheerleader. After all, the last thing a teenager wants is to be singled out. So although I still secretly pulled for the other team, I kept those feelings to myself.
It's been forty years since I've been to a Clarkson game. I understand that they now have a big modern arena that seats twice as many fans. I'd love to see them play in their new home. But even today I can't guarantee that I'd be cheering for them.
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