Never Won Anything Anywhere.

By far the best thing for me while working at Collegiate Sports was that most of my co-workers were a lot like myself. We were all crazy about sports and we were all around the same age. Well maybe they were not as fanatical about hockey as I was, but for the most part sports were a big part of our daily lives.

The group had been established long before I started working at the store back in August 1979. Right from the start I was determined to become part of the weekly hockey games they constantly talked about. Bruce, as far as I could gather was the leader and he seemed to be the guy the others all followed. I figured it would be up to Bruce if I was ever going to get my shot playing in their weekly Saturday night games at Forest Hill Arena. Bruce always seemed interested in having me skate with his boys, but I would have to wait for my turn. 

"Your time will come" he would always tell me. 

It felt as if I needed to prove myself and to show I was worthy.

Seriously? 

For the most part the boys were nothing but once a week shinny players who never played any organized hockey whatsoever. I was already playing with a pretty good group early on Saturday mornings. After our games we went for a quick breakfast over at Steve's on Bathurst Street and then I was off to start work at Collegiate by 9 am. I always wondered how my Saturday morning group would stack up against Bruce’s boys from Saturday night.

One day I presented a challenge to Bruce. I challenged him to a game at Forest Hill Arena on a Sunday afternoon. To make it even more enticing I suggested that the losing team would have to pay for the ice. Bruce accepted my challenge right away and we agreed that I would get the ice in about three weeks' time. My biggest challenge now would be to try and convince enough of my Saturday morning group to play so I could ice a full team. I also needed all of the better players to commit if we were going to have any chance of winning the game. The following Saturday morning I just simply told them that we had been challenged to a game and most of them agreed to play right away. 

Game on.

Game day finally arrived and I got to the rink early as did most of my friends. Bruce and his boys also arrived and most were guys I already knew from working at the store. The rest were all lifetime childhood buddies from the old neighborhood. We met out on the ice where they were all wearing very cool matching sweaters sporting the letters NWAA crested on the front.

What the hell was an NWAA anyway?

The game was fun, physical and the hour went by very quickly. The final score was 5-2 for Bruce’s boys, but we had held our own. One of our guys got smacked in the face with a high stick and got cut for some stitches, but all in all it was a good, fast and clean game. After the game I collected the money from my team and I paid for the ice.

The following week at work Bruce invited me to start skating with his boys on Saturday nights. I guess I had proven myself during our game and I was now worthy. Going forward I would now be playing two games on every Saturday.

"Oh by the way what does NWAA stand for?" I asked Bruce.

I never really got a straight answer, but as far as I could gather Bruce had gone to get team sweaters made up a few years earlier. The store already had a set that was never fully paid for or picked up and Bruce could have them real cheap if he did not mind the letters NWAA crested on the front. He took them and that is how NWAA was born.

The actual unofficial meaning is 'Never Won Anything Anywhere'.

Once I started to play I quickly realized that the boys with the exception of a few were not very good ice hockey players. Most of the boys were childhood friends who had all grown up together in the Briar Hill area of Toronto and we were all pretty much around the same age. Bruce along with the Falcone brothers, Sammy, Scrapper and Paul Brown were really the only players that had any visible ice hockey talent. The rest were quite content just to display their very limited skills once a week on Saturday nights.

Every Saturday during the winter months for almost a decade we would play at Forest Hill Arena from midnight until 2 am. Every week we would play the same team made up of mostly Italian guys who like us had some good players, but for the most part they were equal to us. We would easily spend a quarter of our ice time fighting and arguing and at times the fighting would get pretty serious. I was worried on more than one occasion that someone was going to get seriously hurt.

After the games and dressing room banter we all headed over to the Sky Ranch restaurant on Dufferin Street. The Sky Ranch was open twenty-four hours and naturally we had our own reserved separate tables. I would have an early breakfast before heading home at around 4 am to sleep.

As the years passed by some of Bruce's boys now had other priorities and they gradually stopped playing altogether. I assumed it was because of the family pressure which a few of them had already told me about. Hockey was a contact sport and if they ever got hurt and couldn't work then how would they be able to support their family?

Seriously?

But that is exactly what happened, they just stopped playing. Bruce tried to replace the guys who quit, but sadly as we all entered our thirties the NWAA hockey story came to an end. Bruce did try to revive the team years later, but there was limited interest and NWAA was officially done.

I have lost contact with all the guys I played with from my NWAA days, but I still do have my number ninety-nine red jersey. I have it stored away and every now and then I will come across it. For a brief moment I will smile when I think back to those great times I had playing with Bruce’s boys. The boys who never won anything anywhere.

Man they sure were awesome fun times.