Boarding schools -- Juvenile fiction; Hockey -- Juvenile fiction; Teenage boys -- Juvenile fiction
“Point. Vinton was goal then. And――let me see――Felder was cover point.
And then there was Roeder and Durfee and Pennimore――It was Gerald
Pennimore who gave the cup we play Broadwood for every year. Or,
rather, it was Gerald’s father.”
“The Pennimore Cup? I’ve seen some of them in the Trophy Room in the
gym. Did you beat Broadwood when you were captain, Mr. Loring?”
“I think so. By Jove, I don’t remember now! Hold on, though! Yes, we
did win. It was Gerald’s shot in the last minute or so that gave us the
game. We lost the year before that, though, I believe.” He shook his
head, smiling whimsically. “It used to be all terribly important then,
Tucker, but it doesn’t seem now to have mattered much who won! Only
three years ago I wanted to drown myself because the football team I
captained was beaten in its big game. I don’t believe any fellow was
ever much more unhappy. I thought the world had dropped into space or
the sky fallen in or something. It’s a wonderful thing to be young,
Tucker, and have enthusiasm. Take my advice, my boy, and get all the
honest fun out of life you can. First thing you know you’re twenty-five
years old and you’ve reached that awful stage when you’d rather sit
in front of a fire than put on spikes and run three miles through a
snow-storm for the honor of Yardley! Well, this isn’t hockey, is it? Do
you care enough about the game, Tucker, to take a lot of trouble and
work hard and be a real, genuine, rattling good goal-keeper?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Toby earnestly and eagerly.
“Well, I think you could be if you tried real hard. I like your style.
You remind me of old Dan Vinton. He used to stand up there in the same
cool, quiet way. Looked as if nothing mattered a bit to him, but I’ve
seen him stop two pucks at the same time in practice. Coolness is what
counts, Tucker, that and keeping your two eyes glued right to the puck
every moment.”
“Yes, sir, and after that?”
“Nothing after that but just practice. Get in front of your net and let
some one hammer away at you, some one who can serve them all styles,
high, low and every other way, and see how many you can stop. Take a
half an hour of that every day, Tucker. Have you a spare hour in the
morning?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Toby dubiously, “but I’m afraid I don’t know any
one who’d be willing to do that.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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