Lightning

Young hockey fan has an ice dream

The Tampa Bay Lightning treats a big hockey fan to front row seats to the team's playoff victory Friday night.

By LANE DeGREGORY
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 19, 2003

TAMPA -- She's too young to get married. She's only 12. Even if some hockey player -- some Lightning player -- were to propose, her dad says she has to wait.

So that dream has to be on hold. For now.

But her other hope, her most immediate want, her biggest dream came true Friday night.

[Times photo: Bill Serne] Lauren Wajerski stands rinkside with her "Un-Bolt-leavable" sign for Lightning players to see during warmups before Friday's playoff game.

While her favorite team was fended off the Capitals 2-1 and raised their playoff hopes, Lauren Wajerski was in the front row of the second level at the St. Pete Times Forum, rattling poster board over her head, screaming.

"I'm just so shocked this is all happening. This is all too awesome," she said before the first face-off. "Unbelievable."

Last Saturday, in a feature in the Times' Floridian section, Lauren said her biggest dreams are (in this order): to work for the Lightning, organizing player appearances; to marry a Lightning player; and to score tickets to a playoff game.

Lauren's dad, a physical education teacher, and her mom, who stays home to take care of her two younger brothers, don't have the money to buy season tickets. So Lauren enters every contest she can to win free tickets. She goes to all the player appearances. She has Lightning jerseys, T-shirts, posters, bobbleheads, photos and autographs all around her bedroom. She lives in Spring Hill. She's in seventh grade at Fox Chapel Middle School. She plays volleyball and basketball and runs track. She has never ice skated.

But she's been obsessed with Tampa Bay's hockey team since the beginning of last season.

"I want the Lightning to win the Stanley Cup this year," she said in last week's story. "We're going to do it, too. ... And, oh yeah, I have one more dream I want for me: I need tickets to see the playoffs."

Someone in the Lightning executive offices saw that story. Someone called Arleen Zulawski, who schedules all the player appearances, who knows Lauren. "We gotta get this girl some tickets," Zulawski's boss's boss said. "Get her the best seats we got."

So Lauren, who would have been happy hollering from the nosebleed section, got to sit up front in section 227, for free. The tickets were worth $95 each. And she got to bring her parents and her oldest brother Joey, who's 8. "Unbelievable," she kept saying. "Amazing."

The Lightning rep told Lauren to bring her team jersey to the game. She wore one and brought the other. And while Lauren was hoisting her handwritten, magic-marker sign saying, "My team is Un-Bolt-leavable" above her blond hair, someone in the Lightning's merchandise shop was working on her jersey. They planned to stitch her own name -- WAJERSKI -- across the back, above the blue and silver bolt.

Now she doesn't have to marry a player. She's already part of this family.

"But of course I still want to," she says. "Someday."

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