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The Old Guy gets a reality check

Mike Maharrey knew trying out for the college hockey team would be tough. Just how tough, he had yet to learn.

By Lane DeGregory, Times Staff Writer
Published September 29, 2007

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BRANDON - The air smells like feet and frozen sweat. It's the first day of tryouts for the University of South Florida hockey team, and 50 college students are racing around the rink. Most have names on their backs.

Not the guy in the teal jersey. He's skating behind the pack, wearing a battered helmet the color of sunshine. Across the front, he has painted the Ice Bulls logo.

Wishful thinking. He never even played on a high school team.

"Okay boys," a coach calls. "Let's see what you got."

As two dozen skaters line up to take shots, the guy in the teal jersey crouches in front of the net. The pucks begin to fly at him in rapid-fire succession, soaring from center ice like a horizontal spray of clay pigeons. The guy in the teal jersey slaps them back - thwack - feeling the sting on his stick, his glove, his shin. He spread-eagles onto the ice and smacks another away. Then, slower than he should, he heaves himself back onto his blades.

His hamstrings burn. His back aches. He crouches again, defending his goal.

This is his last chance.

- - -

At the rink, they call him The Old Guy. The college kids tease him about needing a hip replacement, about going senile.

Mike Maharrey is 40 - a decade older than the coaches and twice as old as most of the guys he's competing against.

In his mind, Maharrey is "barely middle-aged." He's a senior at USF this year, a divorced dad studying for a second career in journalism. He lives on a scholarship and his savings. Before he graduates, before he has to go back to working full-time, The Old Guy is determined to win a spot on the Division III college hockey team.

The other players don't know why. They don't know how hard he has worked just to be here.

They've seen the scar slicing across his chest, but have no idea how he got it.

- - -

When the whistle blows and Maharrey takes off his helmet, a steam halo rises from his shaved head. Now you can see how much older he looks than the other students. Gray whiskers sprout in his rust-brown goatee. His blue eyes are tired and serious.

"It's helter-skelter out there," he tells a kid on the bench. "Good luck."

Four people are going out for goalie this year. Three will make the team. There's Smitty - Jason Smith - the only guy from last year's squad. And Dom - Dominic Steiger - a 19-year-old who got cut with Maharrey last year.

And there's a newcomer, a smaller goalie whose black mask is swathed in a snarling skull. Danielle Faries, 22, has played in men's hockey leagues, but never tried out for her college team.

"Smitty probably will be the starting goalie this year," says Joe Davis, assistant hockey director at the Brandon rink. "Danielle and Mike will have it the hardest. Mike looks way better than he did last year. But his age is working against him."

- - -

Maharrey didn't strap on blades until the first time he got to college.

In the late 1980s, when he was studying accounting at the University of Kentucky, he belonged to a Bible study group that met at an ice rink, where one of the members was the manager. "After Bible study, we'd bang the puck around," Maharrey says. "I just taught myself to skate for fun."

After college he got married and had a couple of children, moved to Florida, got divorced, bounced from job to job. "I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do," he says. "Like most middle-aged men, I gained a lot of weight."

By May 2003, he had packed 250 pounds onto his 6-foot frame. He started having chest pains. A cardiologist told him: Your aortic valve is defective. At 36, he needed open-heart surgery.

"That was my wake-up call," Maharrey says. In the hospital, he watched men in their 50s who could barely crawl out of bed. "I thought, if I don't do something, that's going to be me."

He made himself start running, and soon was up to 10 miles a week. He also started skating again, playing pick-up games in Ellenton and Clearwater. In two years, he lost 50 pounds.

He decided to go for that journalism degree at USF. At the Clearwater rink, after a pick-up game, somebody told him, "You should try out for the USF hockey team."

"You're crazy," Maharrey laughed. "I'm too old."

- - -

On the blue ice, inside the red crease, he's golden. He rocks from blade to blade, knees loose, shoulders square, trying to visualize a string tied to his mask. The other end is connected to the puck, an invisible plumb line.

By the end of the scrimmage, he has let only two shots get by. The last one ricocheted off his helmet, chipping the Ice Bulls logo.

"Okay, boys. Good work," a coach calls. "Now c'mon down to this end for drills."

Maharrey groans. He can cover the goal, but speed has never been his strong suit.

"C'mon Mikey," the coach calls. "Bring it in."

- - -

He knew people would think, "This is just a pitiful old guy having a midlife crisis." His mom told him he was only going to get hurt. What was he trying to prove?

He'd never make it to the NHL draft, never earn a minor league salary or even a scholarship. He'd have to pay $650 just to travel with the team.

"I didn't want to look back 10 years from now and wonder, 'What if . . . ' " Maharrey says. "No one likes to fail. But the real failure, to me, is not trying."

He knows he'll never really fit in. But on the ice, he says, he feels like he belongs to something bigger than himself.

Crouching in the crease, he forgets he needs groceries, that his car payment is due - sometimes, even, how much he misses his kids, who live in Kentucky with their mom. For a few brief moments, all he focuses on is that frozen disc beaming toward him.

"After the first day of tryouts last year, I almost quit," he says. "When I got home, I couldn't even get out of my car."

He spent all last season helping the team in the shadows - 12 hours a week updating the Web site, garnering sponsorships, taking pictures. He traveled with the Ice Bulls, but often felt more like their dad.

He wants to be part of the team.

- - -

The night after the first day of tryouts, while the other guys go out drinking, Maharrey sits in his apartment with his cat, eating Chinese takeout, icing his back. Before bed he repaints the logo on his helmet, erasing the evidence of his error.

The next morning, he's the first guy on the ice. "A little sore. Not as bad as I thought. Optimistic."

The coaches have promised to post a list of the first 22 people to make the team after practice. Two will be goalies. These are the guys that will play in most of the games.

Eight more skaters will have another month to prove they deserve a place on the final 30-man roster.

"Mike's the oldest guy who's ever tried out. And he's in pretty good shape - for a guy his age," says Nick Sullivan, the 25-year-old goalie coach. "We're definitely going to be watching the goalies closely today."

He sends Smitty and Dom to one end of the ice, Danielle and Mike to the other. Danielle blocks the first 15 shots. Then it's Maharrey's turn.

A puck sneaks between his legs; another shot pings off his skate. He dives for an unbelievable save, then lets one more puck slip by. He's so tired, he feels like he's going to throw up.

"Okay," the coach calls. "Goal line. Let's go!"

Each of the players has a number. Maharrey is 8 - scrawled in Sharpie on a square of masking tape, stuck to the center of his helmet. After the last drill, while the guys are in the locker room - and Danielle is changing in the figure skating office - the coaches huddle over their clipboards.

"It's tough," says Coach Jay Jodoin. "But we gotta go with the best. And the other guys have a whole month to keep trying."

On a torn piece of notebook paper, he pens 22 numbers. He opens a glass case, tacks up the roster. When the skaters come out, they crowd around, searching for their numbers. Smitty is there, of course. And Danielle! "My girlfriend's not going to be happy," one guy groans. "We're going to have a girl goalie traveling with us."

Maharrey scans the list. No number 8.

Shouldering his gear bag, threading his pads around his right elbow, he walks slowly out of the rink.

- - -

"He was down that day, of course. I could hear it through the phone," says Maharrey's girlfriend, Cynthia Johnson, who lives in Kentucky. "But he didn't focus on who beat him. He said, 'What do I have to work on to get that third spot?' "

"He really wants this so badly," says Johnson, 38. "He just knows he's supposed to be part of this team."

The day after he doesn't make that cut, Mike writes a press release announcing the Ice Bulls' new season. He posts the new partial roster on the Web site. His name is on the bottom: Media Relations.

For the next month, he wakes at 4:35 every Tuesday and Thursday, dresses in the dark, drives from St. Petersburg to Brandon. He has been working on controlling the puck behind the net. There's still a chance - eight slots left.

"I feel good," he says 10 days before the final cut. "Between me and Dom, I think we're pretty close."

- - -

The stranger shows up out of nowhere. A month after tryouts started, and a week before coaches will make the final cuts, another goalie glides onto the rink. He's 6-foot-4, wearing a white USF jersey.

Maharrey has never seen him. He's on the college roller hockey team, someone says.

Now three goalies are going for that last slot.

On the last day of tryouts, Maharrey is sick. He has been suffering back spasms all week. His head aches. "And my nose is running like a faucet," he tells Dom. "I want to go back to bed."

The new guy stays in the net for a half-hour, diving and sliding and slapping back shots.

Maharrey takes off his helmet, then his gloves. "Guess I won't get to go in again," he says.

After practice, while the players are changing, the coaches post the final list.

Maharrey is one of the last guys out of the locker room. He walks slowly to the bulletin board. Standing alone, cradling his stick in one arm, he scans the list.

Dom's name is near the bottom.

Maharrey's isn't there.

He scans the sheet again and sees a name he doesn't know: Brian Napert.

"We were just going to do three goalies, but when we saw Napert, we decided to do four," coach Jodoin says later. "It kills me not to have Mike on there. He was just a step behind Dom."

Leaving the rink, Maharrey tugs his Bulls ball cap over his eyes. He's silent for a few minutes, then says, "I guess I'm not surprised I didn't make it." Another pause. "But I am surprised they rostered that new kid. It's a little frustrating."

He'll still work for the team, he says. Still write press releases, update the Web site, snap pictures. He'll just be behind the bench instead of on it.

"I did the best I could out there," he says.

His head is pounding. His back aches. His right shoulder sags beneath his hockey bag.

Someday, he knows, the new kid will know how it feels.

Lane DeGregory can be reached at (727) 893-8825 or degregory@sptimes.com.

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Ice time

The USF ice hockey team takes on FAU at 7:30 tonight in the Ice Sports Forum in Brandon.

Admission is free for USF students, $5 donations for everyone else. All proceeds, and a raffle during the game, will benefit two children with cancer. To see a full schedule of the Ice Bulls' games, or for more information about the Division III team, go to www.icebulls.org.

 

[Last modified September 28, 2007, 11:26:13]