Some of the best years of my youth were in Chesapeake, Virginia, and I would say I had a fantastic childhood.

We would spend every summer weekend at Virginia Beach. The moment I got onto the sand, I was in a full sprint to the water, with my mom trying to apply sunscreen on me. I’d be out in the water with my foam boogie board the entire day, only taking breaks to eat a quick sandwich with cold, pruny fingers or build some feat of engineering with sand.

We would go on vacations to Lake Gaston, and my dad would rent a boat and a trailer. I would ride my bike all over the campground, go waterskiing or kneeboarding, or swim in the beautiful lake. In the evenings, we would sit around the campfire, roast hot dogs, and make s’mores.

Things started to get more serious with school and sports.

I went to Western Branch Middle School, and I loved it. I made friends and had great teachers. My parents set very clear expectations, and I would be explaining any grades other than straight A’s. I also knew to behave in class, because if my parents got a call, there would be hell to pay. I was on the straight and narrow.

I was doing very well in school. There was even a program called GATE, Gifted and Talented Education, that I qualified for with my grades and test scores. We would take a bus once a week to another local school and take advanced classes. I learned how to code and make a website. I even got a science award, and the principal said that one day I could be an astronaut. Even at this age, I felt like I didn’t deserve any awards and that all the other kids were smarter than me, but I enjoyed going to school.

Unfortunately, in Virginia, I could not find a karate dojo up to my standards, so I had to retire as a very lethal purple belt. To replace that void, I started playing flag football and soccer in the rec leagues.

Soccer quickly became my first love. My older cousins played soccer and were phenomenal athletes. I wanted to be like them. I played rec league for a few years and then tried out for the Elizabeth River Soccer Club. Youth travel soccer in Virginia was serious business. My coach had played in the World Cup, and even at this young age, we were running drills and doing sprints for conditioning. My parents were very supportive of me playing sports, but there were some guidelines that were very clear:

If I joined a team, I would be at every practice and every game, and I would finish the whole season. No exceptions.

If I was on the field, I needed to give my best effort. I could be the star player or score the winning goal, but if I was caught jogging around and going through the motions, there would be a discussion about it on the way home. Effort mattered.

I needed to be tough. Ending up on the ground or being dramatic with an injury was not tolerated.

I vividly remember walking with my father to the soccer field one night when I didn’t have practice. I am out under the lights, staring at the net from the goal box. My dad is lobbing balls at me so I can practice trapping them and shooting on net. It isn’t going well, and I am getting frustrated just as the rain starts to fall. Everyone else leaves to get out of the rain, and it is just my dad and me out there. He tells me that he will stay out with me until I get it right. We stay out there for a while, cleats and clothes soaked, until I finally do. I wasn’t forced to be out there, but I knew my dad would be proud of my hard work.

Effort mattered.

I started to see the impact of effort. I saw that if I worked hard in school and paid attention in class, I would get good grades. When I got good grades, my parents were proud of me and I got science awards. When I worked hard at soccer, I made the team, scored the goals, and got the trophies.

I loved playing soccer during those years. We would travel all over the state for tournaments, and I spent so much time with my team, making great friends. I had nice uniforms, fancy cleats, and a gym bag with all the patches on it. We’d carry a large banner everywhere we went and stake it in the ground behind our bench. I was proud to be a part of that team, and it was an incredible experience that solidified my love for sports and athletics.

My other “star-crossed” love was hockey.

I learned to ice skate on frozen ponds when I lived in New Hampshire. I use the term “skate” loosely, as I would hold on to a chair for dear life and push it around the ice while walking on skates. I eventually graduated to a hockey stick, but if I moved the stick in any direction, I would immediately face-plant, as that stick was the only thing keeping me upright.

Shortly after arriving in Virginia, the Winter Olympics were held in 1992 in Albertville, France. I remember watching the USA team play and being absolutely captivated. The next year, I watched Wayne Gretzky lead the LA Kings to the Stanley Cup and begged my parents for an LA Kings Starter jacket. My parents even helped me write a letter, an actual letter because this was before email, to the LA Kings requesting an autograph. A few weeks later, an envelope arrived with a signed photo of Wayne Gretzky, and I became his biggest fan. During those years, the Winter Olympic schedule changed, and there was another Winter Olympics in 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway. It was the best time to be a young hockey fan, and I was absolutely obsessed with ice hockey. But there was only one problem - the closest ice rink was over an hour away, and the league was absurdly expensive.

Ice hockey was not happening.

I had to settle for the next best thing - street hockey. Fortunately, my father was also a hockey fan, so he got us some inline hockey skates, and hockey dreams were in motion.

I remember trying to match the USA team’s uniform and wearing sweatpants with shorts over the top and the closest thing I could find to a jersey. We lived on a cul-de-sac with plenty of kids on the street, and a spontaneous hockey match would pop off seemingly out of nowhere. The surface of the cul-de-sac was rough, with loose rocks and plenty of potholes. We would rapidly grind through sets of wheels and plastic hockey stick blades. Our elbow and knee pads were torn to shreds from falls on the rough pavement. We endured this pothole riddled purgatory until eventually the high school right down the street repaved the entire parking lot. As soon as the pavement was dry and the cones were removed, we descended upon the paradise of blacktop. It was a dream to skate on. We became scientists and experimented with every type of hockey ball on the market. They came in different materials and levels of hardness, and some were filled with water to stop the bounce. We tried them all and learned one thing - a hockey puck simply did not work. They had several kinds with small wheels built in or some type of glide pegs.

They were all trash.

Once the high school parking lot was in full force, I would eagerly wait for my dad to come home from work. We would skate down to the parking lot and play one-on-one for hours. Luckily, the parking lot had lights, so we were not limited to daytime operations.

I loved every minute of playing hockey with my dad, but I longed for a rink, the ice, and an actual puck.