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| April 23, 2002
By Irish #19
Big So Cal Regional At Anaheim
|  70 teams set to compete at the Anaheim Hockey Center. Here's an early look by Irish #19.
The NARCh Anaheim Regional has become part of the 2-3 Regionals each year that everyone looks to, to determine what NARCh Finals may be like. If you do well at Winternationals, Detroit or Anaheim, you have a good chance at NARCh. It is, then a bell-weather. Of course there was no law or rule that made it this way, it just kind of become that way. A process that has developed and distilled into a what is, as opposed to what we want it to be.
Here’s the deal. I am supposed to know what I am talking about. Truth is that I am down beat 45, sag bellied wearing Kennedyesque Sun-fairer Bausch and Lomb sunglasses, with a stale cotton collared shirt, half tucked in to levis, beaten tennis, and hanging around sweat filled hockey rinks toting a six year old who seems to have more fun ignoring what’s going on at the rinks in favor of what is going on off the rinks. I am a spectator waiting in the crowd on pins and needles waiting for the Hoodlum Parade to hit the rink and perform another bad stint of hooliganism that we all have come to know as hockey.
In any event these writing are little more than musings and like a stock broker at the end of the day I have to count it all up to see if I made a profit. Instead they must be read and enjoyed in “rapere” fashion. (Its Latin, you uneducated goon.) Why write about it at all? Because it is the search for that which is beyond us. The brass ring sought by those with brass balls, and that goes for male and female alike.
What is it the brings us to these events, as parents, players, grandparents, girlfriends, boyfriends or just plain friends? It is that same thing that forces us to always search for what is inside us that shines. It is the search for the warmth of the star, and to feel that warmth inside and it draws us to it at the same time. Sometimes that star makes us love it, while other times the brightness and the heat burns us and makes us blind.
But we are drawn to it anyway. We reach out to touch those that make us wonder, regardless of their ages, and wonder in awe at their skill. This is what I do. I am a fan first and last. I am an unabashed fan, and I love to wonder. I embrace it.
The reason is there are those that look back and know they came up short, that we did not fulfill our dream or even our own expectations. In that way, while we find no mental illness associated with it, we know we failed. We know we did not make the goal. We know we did not make the critical save. We failed. We learned, but we still failed.
So we watch it in others, and through them we feel we can do it, we are a part of it, and in that way the players, young and old, amateur and pro, give us so much more than they ever can give themselves. To them they live a contentment of being able; to us they fulfill our failed dreams.
Together we form the circle that results in applause even for the tiniest of them perform, when they reach inside and do something they thought they couldn’t, it t is the wrapping of the arms around each other and the feeling of family when the goal is scored -- it is the smile that takes place when one looks at how much better the gold appears than silver.
That is why I like NARCh. I like it because in this little corner of our small little world, it is the best, the elite, the top, the heights, and the place where dreams become more than a hazy reality, but become as real as granite.
There is hope to find excellence. There is hope to feel the same way you did when you fell in love the first time and saw her watching you play. There is hope to remember that when you won your first game, the newness of it, never quite goes away and you live it again.
To me, it is like hearing Desperado for the first time sung by the Eagles, and how the same feeling has stayed constant through 2 decades. I am still riding the fences and I know that freedom is just word. But when I watch players reach inside, I know they can ride beyond my fences and although I can no longer go there, I enjoy watching them go farther than I ever could.
We are all seekers of the perfection we can never attain, but we seek still, because to stop is to give up the dream. I refuse to stop dreaming.
But to find the dream we need to be honest. And if I try to be anything, it is honest.
It stands to reason, then, that every time I write on of these I fully expect to be accosted by Sonny Barger, or worse, some crazed fat atom mother with large bosoms who screams out a la Ma Barker, “Lies. You’re lying. You’re all lying against my boys!” I was the source of all anger, and felt I heard in the bare distance, just out of ear shot, like a bad paraphrase of Mistah Kurtz final words: “Exterminate the brute!”
It’s OK. No, it really is. These bad feelings come from those people who are good looking. Good-looking people have no spine or no dreams, because it has all come so easy to them. In the last instance, to be an athlete is to worship the unattainable perfection of skill, and in so striving, to do it honestly and umercilessly. Because the athlete is also the harshest critic because there is no fluff. You win or you lose. So you must be honest. Because doing so, forces us to see not as we want to see ourselves, but as we are.
And that is the greatest lesson of all…
Atoms
Great group of kids. So little to be playing at such a high level. But these boys and girls are all great in my books and it is not the nest I enjoy watching most, but it is the others that look and see that they can reach out and be great too.
Raw Steel has also had some recent success.
Mites
Mites are the boys and girls 10 and under, and these lads and lasses are just putting it all together. Her it will all be an AKS feast. Both AKS teams will go 1-2. Put AMB in there as well.
Squirts
Squirts will showcase AMB again, but if that team I the 89s, well they are playing for pride because I believe they qualified at NARCh. LV Empire will show strong along with VC Vipers.
PeeWee
The Dillos 87 should own this one, because all the other top teams have already qualified an not other team at their level is playing. One would wonder if any team makes them break a sweat, both because they never skates faster than snails on pain medication, but because their style is control, control and control. The real battle will be for the second and third spots, and I put Bulldogs and Hyper 88 there, with an edge to Hyper 88 for the second spot.
Bantams
Bantams will be interesting and closer than many think. Hyper Empire 87 should end up in the final four, but they will then face the cream of the crop, AMB 86, AMB 85 and Hyper 86. If I was a betting man, I would put Hyper 86 and 87 in 4th and 5th and both Bulldog teams one and two.
Junior
In Juniors, it looked like Perumean's Predators all the way, but they are saving money for the Detroit Regional and so they won't be playing at Anaheim. DARN! Love those Preds... So, it will be between AMB 83 and 84.
I will rank the High Schools in a separate article.
There are my picks, and as always, go out there prove me wrong and make it fun!
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