Читать книгу I Am Nobody. Confronting the Sexually Abusive Coach Who Stole My Life онлайн

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The shot had come in hard and off the ice. It looked like I had made a great save, blocking it with my glove and then smothering it. Except that when I went down to smother it in the crush of players crashing in around the net (maybe crashing the net is bit of an overstatement, since we were just little kids, but it remains epic in my mind), I nudged the puck over the line as I covered it. Even the other team didn’t know they had scored. But the referee, standing in perfect position, thought he had seen what I knew had happened. He skated over to me to get the puck and said he couldn’t see for sure and asked me if the puck had gone in. I told him it had. And with that, he signaled a goal and a face-off at center ice. And in doing so, it was if he had started a war.

Now, understand what was at stake here. We’re talking the highest level of competitive hockey for nine- and ten-year-olds, so of course that meant hockey scholarships, agents, pro hockey careers, entire futures, right? You would have thought so given how the adults acted. In the midst of the outrage, the referee skated over and told both coaches that the goalie had told him it was a goal. All the other players on the benches heard this, and all the players on the ice who had followed the referee looking for an explanation heard this. I only found this out after the game. I was not a popular person. And on the way home in the car, my dad and I had a conversation that I didn’t understand.