Miracles still happen in

Lake Placid, New York

By: Ronald Colman

“Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” said ABC sportscaster Al Michaels. I don’t know if I believe in miracles, but what I
do know is I had my own miracle in Lake Placid, New York. The same place where the underdog United States hockey team
stunned the world by defeating the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games to advance to the medal round. Just like
them, my underdog moment became a success story when the medal was placed around my neck at the Herb Brooks arena. A
symbol of accomplishment that I could wear and keep for a lifetime to remember what my team and I had accomplished.

My mom, dad, little brother, and I packed clothes and other

necessities for a weekend in Lake Placid to participate in the CAN/
AM hockey tournament. This tournament involved teams from
around the United States and Canada to come together and compete
for the gold medal. This took place at the Herb Brooks arena, which
was named after the head coach of the 1980 Olympic hockey team
for his accomplishment with his team. We loaded all our stuff in my
dad’s 2007 blue Kia Rondo that was perfectly fine for accommodating
four people. When you add a weekend’s worth of luggage to the car, it
becomes much less comfortable. My brother and I quickly realized this
five-hour drive from Massachusetts to New York is going to be hell.

My brother and I were sitting in the back passenger seats and

between us were some suitcases and bags that we were taking with us. I was squished up against the window and had no leg
room at all. Every time I asked if we could pull over to get out and stretch, my dad would say to just deal with it because we’re
almost there. An hour later and we weren’t there yet. The only nice part of the drive was when we finally got to New York and
almost at Lake Placid. Growing up in a city just outside of Boston, this was something I really hadn’t seen before. My ears
popped as were going to higher elevation. I had to move my mouth to try to unblock them and thought it’s so weird how that
happens.

There was finally an end to this ride as we drove into this little village. As we moved closer, I could see this big building
with many different flags of countries from all around the world. Some I could recognize, like the flags of England and
Canada. Others I had never seen before in my life. The village was just a little further down the street and had shops and
hotels on both sides of the street. One shop that my team and I loved sold rubber band guns. They were these wooden guns
that would stretch a rubber band from the tip of the gun to this circular star that would move when you pulled the trigger
to release the rubber band towards your target. I got the tommy gun, it was the more popular gun among the most of us. We
would run around the hotel shooting them at each other and the hotel staff quickly realized they weren’t going to be able to
stop a bunch of wild hockey plating kids. They gave us this extra room that wasn’t being used for anything except keeping
some furniture as storage. They allowed us to have our rubber band wars here and by the time we left, it looked like World
War Three took place in the room.

When we weren’t messing around and having fun in the hotel, we had hockey games to play. The tournament was set up so
that we would play every team in our age level. There was a total of five teams in the tournament, so every game counted for
us and was very important. We won a couple games and lost the other two. We weren’t the best team there, but we also weren’t
the worst. There was one team that was special for us because they were a team from Canada. It was cool because we have
never played against people from a different country before. Especially from the place where hockey is the biggest sport and
the origins of great hockey players like Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky. Needless to say, the Canadian team destroyed us, and
we weren’t surprised. They were good and we expected that, we just had no idea how to beat them.

Losing to them meant we were weren’t going to play for the gold medal because there were other teams with better records
than us. We now had to play for the bronze medal or go home with nothing. The game was also super early in the morning, so
we had to be up at five to check out of the hotel and be ready to play a seven in the morning game. The locker room was one
of the nicest locker rooms I had ever been in. You could tell it was built in the late 1970’s because of how old the wood of the
benches looked and the simplistic look of the white walls with one big maroon stripe going around the room. because before
the game was the quietest it had ever been the entire weekend we’ve been there. Usually we are all cracking jokes and messing
around, but we were all visually and audibly tired. We needed to find a way to wake ourselves up because we were playing the
kids from Canada again.

For its age, the arena was still beautiful and the biggest arena I have ever played in. This was a place where so many people
gathered to see one of the biggest moments in Winter Olympics history. Even the ice was so big that we had so much room to
skate around. This was an Olympic-sized arena, Olympic rinks are typically bigger than an arena you would go to for an NHL
game. This is because typically European rinks have more ice for players to move around on. Looking up in the rafters, I saw
jerseys of important players that deserved to have their jersey hung up for everyone to look up and remember them. I didn’t
know who some of them were but I did know that these men were people worth knowing and deserved to be remembered for
how good they were.

We didn’t wake up. By the second period, we were getting dominated and losing three to one. We
were lucky to even have that one goal. Ten minutes into the third period and the game coming closer
to an end, we were on the verge of going home with empty hands. I went to retrieve the puck from
behind my team’s net and one of the opposing team’s players hit me from behind, a dirty hit in hockey.
My teammate, Will Flattery, didn’t like what just happened to me and started beating on the kid
that hit me. They both were sent to the penalty box and suddenly my team had life. Once that puck
dropped, everything started to click. We were making great passes and skating good. We exploded
with a quick five goals in the matter of six minutes. The crowd was fired up and we couldn’t believe
what we were doing. The buzzer made a loud noise to signal the game was over and we all threw our
helmets and gloves off and tackled our goalie. After, we lined up to receive our bronze medal, but to us
it was the gold. It was my miracle on ice.