A Small Writing Assignment

The company I work for distributes a flyer each month to students which features a written contribution from one of the teachers.  That contribution is entered in the "Global Talk" section.  The articles usually focus on various aspects of life back in each teacher's home country.  The recent exception was an article written by my co-worker James about his experiences when he first came to Japan as a high school exchange student (if I recall correctly, he graduated from a high school in Shiga prefecture following three years of study there).

Two weeks ago I was asked to provide a Global Talk article.  Initially I was stumped as to what to choose as a topic.  The requester suggested that I use one of the articles I have written for a series of lunchtime lessons I teach.  My response to that was a "Well..."said with a tone of voice which didn't hide the fact I thought that was a bit of a cop out.  She kindly responded "You have an interesting one coming up about the Stanley Cup.  How about choosing hockey as a topic.".  Okay.  She had me there.  She asked if I could have the article ready in two weeks and I said I could have it ready the next week.  It wouldn't take me two weeks to write a three hundred and fifty word article.

My first thoughts about the article were focused on how to introduce the topic to my audience.  I thought of my sport spectator experiences in Japan.  On my past trips here I took whatever opportunity which presented itself to go watch sumo, specifically the grand tournaments which are held every two months.  I've yet to watch a baseball game in person in Japan.  The closest professional team is based in Sendai and I'm not one to take that much time and trouble to watch a baseball game.  I will travel to watch soccer matches.  So I'm content to drive up to Tendo and watch the local team, Montedio Yamagata, struggle to gain promotion to the top level J1 League.  After watching Montedio win their latest match I struck upon the idea of drawing a quick analogy between Japan's two national sports, sumo and baseball, with Canada's two national sports, lacrosse and hockey.

So I put that idea to paper...so to speak.  Actually, I typed it up on a computer in a word processing document.  I had gotten started on the second paragraph when I had to set the article aside to teach some classes.  Upon completing those I returned to the article...and didn't like what I saw.  It was a bit convoluted and dry.  Really dry.  The contents amounted to a tenuous comparison between two cultures and their favourite sports plus some historical facts.  It lacked life.

I leaned back and thought for a moment; what makes a game interesting as a spectator?  For some odd reason "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" popped into my head.  The logical connection to that for a hockey fan...of course...!   I quickly typed in the words to the chorus of Stompin' Tom Connor's "Hockey Song" at the head of the article.  Voila!  It was the blast of fresh air the article needed.

The rest of the article was written up quickly.  Out went the history lesson.  The description of the game was boiled down to "people on skates using curved sticks to try to put a round object, it's called a 'puck', into a goal".  Due to space constraints mention of Foster Hewitt had to be dropped but the anecdote about Danny Gallivan, where a university professor complained to him that "cannonading" wasn't a word, stayed.

I closed off the article with the chorus from "Big League", a song recorded by Tom Cochrane and Red Rider.  I had chosen to write about a moment at a hockey game which I thought was special.  I've been to many games over the years so there were plenty to choose from.  I ended up choosing the Vancouver Canuck's 2008-2009 season home opener.  Before that game a memorial tribute ceremony was held to honour Luc Bourdon, a young member of the team who had died in a motorcycle accident in May 2008.  Tom Cochrane and, if I'm not mistaken, Red Rider band mate Ken Greer performed "Big League" as part of the ceremony.  For me, it was a haunting and powerful moment.  I don't suppose my little article did it justice but I hope I managed to convey an iota of its impact to my audience.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that one...