I’m exhausted

Me after another late night session in the home office or command centre.

    I’m exhausted.

    As enjoyable as it has been to put together this blog, I’ve struggled with trying to figure out when I am going to take a break from it.

    I am not down in the dumps or anything like that. I have hit the point where I need a recharge.

    Looking back upon things, I feel like I have been going hard since the start of the 2016-17 season. I’ve followed the major junior hockey playoffs to covering the WHL final in each of the past four years and followed through with the Memorial Cup in three of those years including two in person and one from afar.

    Over the last five seasons, I covered the last five Saskatchewan Female Midget AAA Hockey League finals, where the Saskatoon Stars won four titles and the Prince Albert Northern Bears won one title. Those teams all appeared in the Esso Cup female midget AAA hockey nationals.

    I find I am missing the huge number of players who have graduated from the Stars and a number of players I knew from the rest of the league who have graduated.

    I have covered a lot of good things this year. With that said, you get emotionally invested in the good things, but they still take a lot out of you due to the investment you put into them.

Fun on the Raiders WHLtitle run.

    Away from this blog, my summer was filled with personal things that I had to attend to, which I had put off. Some of those things dragged on into the fall football season.

    I am on the other side of dealing with those personal things, but even that feels draining. Usually, I focus on putting in time to recharge during summer, but I wasn’t able to do that this past summer.

    On top of all of that, it seems like I have had to tackle various things that have come up in my life that I can’t control like freelance opportunities drying up.

    My year has consisted of replacing my car, computer and mobile phone among other things. All have components where you need to invest time into them.

    Add to the other things I have dealt with, you start wondering when you are going to have time for yourself.

    The fun parts included seeing the Prince Albert Raiders make their run to winning the WHL title. I felt invested in that run. Investment came from the memories I have from living in that community and covering the Raiders over three seasons from 2001 to 2004 for the Prince Albert Daily Herald.

    The Raiders playoff run allowed me renew friendships and ties with those who had links with the team. A number of those ties included former players I covered during my years living there.

    When Dante Hannoun scored his overtime goal in Game 7 of the WHL championship series to give the Raiders the league title for the first time since 1985, that scene at the Art Hauser Centre that night was way better than the dream.

    As the Raiders playoff run was winding down, I started to get back involved with covering the Saskatoon Valkyries as they ventured through their Western Women’s Canadian Football League season. 

All is good after a Huskies win at Mosaic Stadium.

    I pretty much missed all of their 2018 season, and when I started getting back together with everyone involved with this group, I realized how much I missed them.

    When Valkyries defensive position coach Justin Filteau passed away tragically in a plane crash before the team’s last regular season game, it was devastating.

    It was amazing to see the Valkyries honour Filteau for the rest of their campaign, where they posted a 9-0 overall record and won the WWCFL title. Along the way, the team was coping with Filteau’s passing along with the provincial football and judo communities.

    Filteau played for the CJFL’s Saskatoon Hilltops and the University of Saskatchewan Huskies football team in U Sports, coached football and was heavily involved in judo.

    He touched a lot of lives, and even now it is still crazy to think he is gone.

    In fall, football season hit, and it was a blast covering the Hilltops as they won a sixth straight CJFL title and the Huskies football team’s run to returning to the Canada West final, where they fell to the University of Calgary Dinos.

CJFL title wins for the Hilltops never get old.

    For the last six straight seasons, I have covered the Hilltops extensively, and I did more coverage on the Huskies football team this past season than I had done at any time in the past.

    Being around both groups was so fun, that you didn’t have to do much to get energized to get going.

    When their seasons finished, the weight of the emotional investment you put into both teams hits you.

    On the negative energy front, I know the fallout regarding Don Cherry’s rough departure from Sportsnet and Hockey Night In Canada and the coach abuse controversies in hockey that have come up the past two weeks on social media have been draining too.

    Instead of wanting to jump back on to the WHL circuit which I have made spot appearances on since September, I just wanted to go away and disappear.

    I know if I end up in the rink around the Prince Albert Raiders or the Saskatoon Blades, it will give me a boost to get going again.

    If I ended up at one interview session involving Raiders head coach Marc Habscheid or Blades head coach Mitch Love, I know that will give me a spark for a bit.
    Due to living in Saskatoon, I just need to run into Blades captain Chase Wouters, netminder Nolan Maier or high energy forward Riley McKay somewhere in town to jacked up excited for hockey.

I need a break, but I know I am still going to end up back at the rink.

    Looking at the WHL schedules, I see the Medicine Hat Tigers and Kamloops Blazers are set to make road trips through these parts. I really want to see Tigers head coach and general manager Willie Desjardins and Blazers head coach Shaun Clouston.

    Looking towards that, I don’t want to disappear just yet.

    With that said, part of me wants to get out of town and maybe spend two weeks in Medicine Hat visiting old friends. I would likely do a couple things on the Tigers, but outside of that the focus would be on getting away.

    The goal the rest of this month will be to drag butt for as much as possible. I want to try that before going to the extreme of just signing off for three weeks.

    I’ve had fun, but I am running on fumes.

    If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

-------                                     

    If you like what you see here, you might want to donate to the cause to keep independent media like this blog going. Should you choose to help out, feel free to click on the DONATE button in the upper right corner. Thank you for stopping in.