Rudy on Ice

So I'm watching Mattawan and Wyandotte play last night and it's late in a 4-1 game. The Mattawan coach pulls his goalie, presumably so his team can get a late one and take a positive away from the final few minutes. Wyandotte gets control of the puck and a kid deposits an empty netter to make it 5-1. The players and fans just start going crazy. Like pounding on the glass and whooping and hollering crazy. I'm thinking, "C'mon, the score was 4-1."

The reason why is the nice kid pictured here. His name is Dallas Covasos, and he's a senior at Wyandotte. He tried out for the team four years in a row and got cut each year. This season, he asked the coaches if he could be a team manager. They said yes, and he started showing up to practices every day to help with equipment and stats and the things a team manager does. Then something happened with another kid on the team, and his coach, Mike Quint, told him he could be on the roster but probably wouldn't play much, if at all. "The coaches told me to just keep working hard, and we'll see what happens," Covasos told me after the Mattawan game.

Last night was his first game, and the coaches literally wrote his name in on the pre-printed roster label. He got in the game and with 1:13 left in the contest, he buried the empty netter. His team and the fans went nuts. I guess I would have, too, had I known the story.

After each game, the Wyandotte team selects a player to wear the hard hat. It's one of those team awards that signifies hard work and contributions to the team. The choice for last night's game was a no-brainer.