To learn to play a sport well, one must acquire the skillsets needed, which often takes time and usually a young start. Sports like hockey, for example, require the players to not only be able to skate, but then also to stick handle and shoot. Starting a sport as an upperclassman takes both flexibility, adaptability, and great acceptance for failure.

Senior Mason Mohring joined the St. Paul Academy Hockey program midseason with absolutely no experience. His only knowledge of the game came from a few skating sessions out on a pond with a few friends, where his inexperience moving effectively on the ice and handling the puck were not problems.

“My mother wouldn’t allow me to play high school hockey because of her unsureness in my ability to simply skate and everything else I had going on. Once all my college apps were done I decided I had nothing going on anymore and that was enough to convince my mom to let me play,” Mohring said.

After his first game playing for the Junior Varsity team, however, it was clear to him he would not play much, but he still enjoyed the time spent with the team. Every game he would get a few shifts at the end of the third period in which he would jump onto the ice, trip a guy, then fall down himself and draw a penalty. Mohring progressively improved as hockey player though, as shown by his goal during the JV team’s first triumph against the Minneapolis Novas on Feb. 13.

Junior Jack Labovitz, another first year athlete, had a similar experience as Mohring, playing on a basketball team for the first time in his life.

Although basketball does not require learning to skate or use external equipment, it does test coordination as well as the ability to dribble and shoot accurately often taking years to master. “Before this season I played often during pickup games with friends, so I’m not lacking in skill that much relative to others. My problem is that I do not know all the rules of the game yet, because in a pickup game, rules don’t really exist,” said Labovitz.

By seeing and hearing both Mohring’s and Labovitz’s experience in starting hockey and basketball respectively, it is apparent that the joy of developing a new skillset. In addition, actively being a part of a team make starting a new sport fun and worth it.