One of my former cow-orkers at GeoVision just sent me this picture from one of our pick-up hockey games: 
GeoHockey, as we called it, was a blast. I was terrible at it, but it got me a chance to get some exercise. The best part, though, was getting an ice-level view of some really good hockey players. There was one guy, Chris Fanjoy, who played in a couple of leagues, and because he played 4 or 5 times a week his equipment never dried out – you could smell him coming sometimes. There was another guy, dammit I forget his name, who just about danced on his skates – I remember just standing there in awe at what a fluid and natural skater he was. There were several other really good players, and watching them make plays gave you a sense of the game that I never got from watching it on TV.
There was another guy who I was always glad to see, because with him there I wasn’t the worst skater on the ice. He never changed his clothes – he skated in the same black jeans that he’d go to work in.
And there was a guy or two I was always sorry to see – they were good players, but they cared too much about scoring, and not enough about having fun. One of them would cuss me out for not having enough equipment after he’d broken the rules and raise the puck or after I’d limp off after he body checked me to the ground. We didn’t allow body checking or raising because this was supposed to be a fun thing, and some people didn’t have full equipment (namely cups).
We usually didn’t have goalies either – we just turned the nets around backwards and you had to bounce the puck off the back boards into the net to score.
Normally it was so much fun that it was worth the knee pain afterward.
Hey, I used to date the guy in that picture!
Too bad you didn’t know him when he was handsome.
Good picture. I remember my broomball days at college fondly.
I like that bit about bouncing goals off the back boards, too.
More resonance, and thanks. At MIT my dorm hall fielded a co-ed C league team, meaning if you could stand, however briefly, on skates you could play. We had an occasional female right-winger who was something like 4’10” and 80 pounds. When it was fun it was the best, but it ALWAYS meant trouble when the other team had somebody in a full NHL uniform. And for some reason the PolSci guys were total jerks, they were all 7′ and 250 pounds with scars. But the very most fun was midnight skating; climbing over a 10-foot chain-link fence in the moonlight and having the whole place to yourself, and ducking into the box when Campus Patrol came to check out the noise. Sweet. [BTW, I’m a fellow Kodaker now, KP East.]