The cold, crisp, and still air surrounds me as I enter the rink an hour and a half early before anyone is there. The ice was a shiny white as the lights reflected off its surface. The ice was smooth like glass with no indents or lumps. I can see my breath as I walk towards our locker room. The smell of hot showers and shampoo fill my nostrils as I enter the locker room. I drop my bag with an aggressive slam and put on my warm ups as I grab my racketball. One by one as I warm up my teammates enter the locker room. The tension builds as we dress and prepare for the game. Our song plays as we exit the locker room and we wait for our queue to hop on the ice. We can hear the fans roaring on the other side of the door. As we burst through the fans go crazy and the air is still no more.

Next, my team hops on the ice and we all begin warm ups as soon as possible. We scream and yell as we hype one another up. We get our blood flowing and head to our end of the ice as our nerves and the tension build. We get to our zone and begin warm ups. Once finished we sit on the bench and wait for our coach to give his pre-game speech which is almost nonexistent. Once he finishes his one sentence pregame talk we all exploded with excitement and determination getting one another's energy up. We send out the starting lineup and head towards center ice with our white and red striped jerseys with our logo reading North Stars. We all explode with energy as the puck drops. The game was on.

This amazing sport will never leave me, it will always be apart of me and my love for this sport will never die. My love for hockey is shown throughout my room. On my sky blue wall you can see my rows of pictures with gleaming trophies in the middle of each in front of my teams from when I was seven all the way until the past year. They are all lined with dark black frames behind a glass pane. As you follow down the wall my first ever hockey stick even though broken halfway up the shaft, with splinters of wood sticking out the top, it was my main feature of my room. Its white and black composite material reading Reebok in black bold letters with gray speckles.  

In one of my many plaques you can see our young smiling faces with our old black jerseys reading Monroe. Above the words on our jersey is a picture of an bright red Ice Hawk holding a stick in front of a white and red net. The photo is from the LCAHL championship with a bold black border with white speckles with the small orange Little Caesars pizza guy in the corner. My many clothes and jerseys show that no matter who I play for I am going to continue my pursuit in hockey. One of my favorite jerseys is from Nations Cup which has bold red letters reading USA. It is surrounded by an ocean of navy blue with red stars on both shoulders encased in a dark brown oak frame. I have a trophy that is at least 3 feet tall with gold pillars supporting a black granite plate with a golden goalie on top making a reaching save.

Lastly, this sport has taught me many things and it is something that I will never give up. It has taught me how to be competitive and when you fail or mess up you have tolearn and develop from your mistakes. I learn this because if I wasn't competitive then I would it enjoy it and compete for other things. I learned to develop from my mistakes because when I get scored on in hockey I literally talk to myself to try and fix whatever it is that I did wrong. I also can never give up this sport because it is a major part of me and without it I wouldn’t be the same person. I love this sport a ton and you can see that through the items in my room that show my many accomplishments throughout my life as a hockey player.