I am going to write for you a story, which nobody wants to tell, a story well hidden in my country. This is a story which kill lots of people's hopes, dreams and ruin peoples life.
This is a story about ice hockey players in our country.
This is not a sport, well developed nor well funded here, but this does not mean that there are no people actually caring for this
Exactly the opposite, since my childhood I know lots of teens who wanted to play exactly this sport, who had their own life circling around everything connected with that sport. I was one of that teens.
I gave all my pocket money in order to pay for one or two practices per month. This is extremly expensive sport here, only people with good financial state can affort to actually practice it. The tax fee per month (1 practice per week) was approximately 1/10th of my mothers salary (now even more), and believe me there is no point of practicing only once per week. You should do it at least 3 to 4 times per week if you want to have any chance ... even a small one. You have to buy your own equipment, to change it at least once per 2 years, even more when you are a teen and you grow up, you have to change it even more frequent just because it doesn't fit you anymore. So that counts approximately 3 to 4 salaries per year.
<p>So lest do some short math calculations. 3 salaries for equipment, my all pocket money for 2 more practices and 3/10 salary per month (3.6 salaries for whole year).
That made my mother gave half of her earned money just for my passion ... And dreams dies hard....
She did everything possible for me but that was not enough ... ice hockey do not pay bills here ... not by anychance
Since the authorities saw our huge desire, they decided tostart using as as much as possibly can
We didnt have yet championshps inside the country, but they wanted to earn more and more, and we become national team (can you imagine the young teenager, who belives that this actually will change his/hers life).The responsible authorities made us believe that we are going to practice for free, that we will have equipment and we will start competing against other national teams etc etc etc
Well some of that came true ...
We started practicing for free ... around 11PM (when the ice is free and the rink is actually closed), the next day we had to go to school, work etc ... and we didnt have any power to do so ...we were tired as hell...
They took our own equipment (which we bought by ourselves) and gave us"new one; (for the last 10years nothing was chaged, you get weight or loose some, your foots become bigger, who cares ... you had one brand new equipment years ago thats it ... everything else we buy it again by ourselves, by our own money ...)
But one thing actually came true ... we become national team so we actually compete ... Against all others well prapared teams ..
See at first we trained during the night every single day ... One day all of us grow up, and we started working and earning our own money ... We live all around the city so we had to go home by taxi or by car since the city transport do not work after midnight ... and believe me there is no employer in the world who is happy to see his employee tired and not focused from the first thing in Monday morning
The responsible authorities earned money from us competing, they were happy ... they did not give any money for us, except for transport once per year
We started to complain from the late practices, and autorities decided to punish us ... with no practices at all ...
So now if we want to practice again we have to pay ... if we want better practicing hours we have to pay even more ... We do not have changing room, nor even a bathroom. After practice we have to take all our equipment and go home dirty and smelly and tired ...
We are going to tournament on the other side of the world, landing from the plane few hours before the first game, tired with swollen legs, and we do not earn absolutely nothing, not even a penny for what we do ...
Most of us are so disapointed from the obsticles we have to face, that we do not want to do it anymore ...
Our whole life, the last 12/13 years was about that ... how we are going to become better, to be a real national team ... and now we are everything but.
For someone this may be something funny and not important, but the thing is that when you are crushed so bad ..
