By Tris Wykes \
Valley News Staff Writer \
Friday, January 25, 2013
West Lebanon — Shouting could
be heard from within a Campion Rink locker room early on the evening of
Jan. 14. Then the battered blue door flew open and Hanover High hockey
goaltender James Montgomery led the Marauders out to face visiting
Concord.
As the players clomped along single-file, they
were accompanied by more than their clamor.
An odoriferous, almost
palpable scent rode with them. A young lady, walking behind the rink’s
benches and toward the parade, stopped abruptly and flapped her hand in
front of her face.
Bring in da noise. Bring in da funk.
For the uninitiated, hockey equipment and hockey
locker rooms smell worse than those of
their sporting brethren. To the
athletes who marinate in the sour, salty mildew that accompanies the
game, however, it’s a comforting olfactory experience. Just a whiff will
stir up happy memories from long ago, of winning and losing, of lengthy
car rides, of best friends and weekend hotel stays with exasperated
parents.
“That’s the smell of success, right there,”
Hanover coach Dick Dodds said with a grin as the last of his players
sallied forth onto Campion’s ice.
Those who encounter hockey equipment smell have difficulty crafting a description, despite the fact it is so bad and so unique.
“It’s hard to describe, because it’s not just
body odor,” said Chrissy Drake, captain of Lebanon High’s girls hockey
team and a three-sport athlete for the Raiders. “Soccer smell has grass
mixed in and softball has dirt and dust. Hockey just has a lot of
sweat.”
Donnie Webb, a writer for the Syracuse (N.Y.)
Post-Standard newspaper, may have best described hockey’s bouquet last
year when he wrote that “It is at the top of the food chain when it
comes to odor. … It is a witch’s brew of stench created by sweat, body
oils and the massive amount of equipment that players wear.”
The science involved isn’t complex. Sweat soaks
into the soft parts of a competitor’s gear — such as the linings for
shoulder, shin and elbow pads. It permeates shirts, shorts and tights
worn against the skin, clings to the nylon and plastic used in hockey
pants and is especially powerful in gloves and skates.
Ben Kaufman, a recreational hockey player who
writes an Internet blog called The Weekly Meat, noted in 2008 that
hockey equipment smell is “shockingly the same from player to player:
stale, fetid, animalistic. Not quite body odor, not quite fungus, not
quite feet, not quite aging cheese … but a combination of all.
“I’d be sitting next to a guy on the bench — or
worse yet, skate by a guy on the ice — and get slammed by a sudden and
thunderous wall of stink,” Kaufman wrote. “The sort which burns your
nostrils.”
Brian Corcoran is in the midst of his 10th
season as equipment manager for the Dartmouth men’s team, but he vividly
recalls the first time he encountered the hockey smell. Hired in the
spring, he walked into the locker room after a group of players had
skated during their sophomore summer.
“In hockey terms, I had my back to the Zamboni
when it ran me over,” Corcoran said. “I can’t even describe how bad it
was. An absolutely sour, musky stench.”
Eventually, however, Corcoran became like all
players and coaches — pretty much immune to the smell. That doesn’t mean
the Connecticut native doesn’t do everything he can to keep it to a
minimum. Two industrial-strength fans occupy opposite corners of the
Dartmouth locker room and are powerful enough when running to blow a set
of shower sandals across the floor. Six air freshener cups are placed
throughout the space and the Thompson Arena washing machines have a
special cycle designed to combat the odor of the hockey players’
undergarments while not damaging them.
Despite these measures, the smell of Dartmouth’s locker room is, ah, rather noticeable.
“That’s normally the first thing that anyone who
doesn’t play hockey comments on when they get in there,” laughed center
Tyler Sikura. “Especially the ladies.”
Corcoran said the Big Green women’s players ask
to have their protective gear washed roughly once a week. The men? Less
frequently, although “Corky” regularly goes through the locker room with
a spray bottle of sanitizer and targets especially smelly equipment.
“The women wear a lot of scented lotion, so it’s
good that they use the wash more,” Corcoran said. “But we have a lot of
superstitious guys who don’t want their gloves or jock washed.”
Some of the men’s players also go barefoot
inside their skates, a habit which, if you examine the undersides of
their skate boots, shows itself in streaks of rust from corroding
rivets.
Canadians, no doubt inspired by the sock-free style of NHL
legend Bobby Orr, tend to do this more, Corcoran said. Those players get
their skates sprayed with disinfectant and deodorizer almost every time
they bring them in for sharpening.
Although there seem to be extremely few
instances where the bacteria on hockey equipment has led to ill health,
it’s always a concern and one trumpeted by companies that disinfect
gear. Cuts, abrasions and blisters can provide openings for germs to
enter the body, especially when they’re pressed against elbow and shin
pads, gloves or skates. The most dramatic consequence could be exposure
to MRSA, a potentially deadly strain of staph that is resistant to
antibiotics.
“In the average set of hockey equipment, there’s
over a million living organisms, any one of which can cause you serious
harm,” Steve Silver, founder of equipment sanitizing company SaniSport,
told USA Hockey Magazine in 2011.
Bob Friend, manager of the hockey department at
the West Lebanon sporting goods store Stateline Sports, said the shop
bought a $14,000 SaniSport cabinet about eight years ago.
Stateline did a
brisk business until the machine was destroyed by flooding during
Tropical Storm Irene. Resembling a wide, stainless steel refrigerator,
the device pumped pressurized ozone inside itself during a 17-minute
cycle. The cost was about $35 per use and Friend said he was happy with
the results.
“I would toss my own equipment in there and it
would get the smell right out,” he said. “It would come back, but we had
regulars who would bring in their stuff at the start of the season,
halfway through, and at the end.”
American Hockey League players Jordan LaVallee
and Nathan Oystrick could have used sanitizing during a 27-hour stretch
of the 2007-08 season. The pair of Chicago Wolves skaters agreed not to
remove their gear, with the exception of their helmets and gloves,
during a fundraising effort that eventually collected more than $5,000
for charity. The pair played a game, practiced and slept in their rancid
padding. They also participated in meet-and-greet receptions with fans
at two local restaurants.
LaVallee told the Toronto Star that he had to
replace his undergarments and protective cup after the stunt and that
the garter belt that held up the socks atop his shin guards
“disintegrated.”
“It’s a unique smell,” LaVallee said of the
scent in which he wallowed. “There’s nothing you can compare it to. The
closest thing is probably sewage.”
Dartmouth men’s coach Bob Gaudet recalls wearing
old-fashioned goaltender padding during his undergraduate days with the
Big Green from 1977-81. Made of leather and filled with cotton stuffing
or horsehair, his equipment would grow crusty each time it dried. These
days, he marvels at the high-tech, netminder protection his daughter,
Kelly, lugs home and spreads in the basement after her Hanover High
practices.
“My little angel, her stuff smells, too,” Gaudet
said with a laugh. “Her brothers (former Dartmouth players Joe and Jim)
used to put their stuff down there when they played. I’m not sure the
smell will ever come out of the house.”
http://www.vnews.com/sports/4007611-95/hockey-equipment-players-smell
No comments:
Post a Comment