The True Confessions of a (Reformed) Puckbunny

Tiffany Marie, 18, USA

For those of you who don’t know, a Puckbunny is a female hockey fan, who is more interested in the guys who are playing than the actual game. I, Tiffany Marie, am a reformed Puckbunny.

It all started on November 20th, 1998. One of my close friends asked me and another friend to go to a minor-league hockey game to watch a local team that I had never really paid much attention to in the past. Being 16 and living in a small, boring town, I had to accept, due to lack of anything more productive to do on a Friday night. So we made the short 15-minute journey to the nearby city in which the team played.

The minute the game started, I fell in love with the sport. Little did I know what would happen over the next few months. I had a great time at the game, and as we were leaving, I was already looking forward to attending another one. However, as we neared the exit, I saw him. God’s gift to women in a sweaty hockey uniform. It was total lust at first sight. I later found out his name was Tom*, and he was 32 years old, with a wife and 3-year-old son. Damn, he didn’t look that old. I knew right then that this would be the extent of my life with Tom. I could look, but not touch.

Over the next month, we went to more and more of the team’s home games, and more and more people joined our little entourage. Eventually, I was a member of a group of eight girls, each of whom had their own object of affection. For Clone it was Mike, the blonde model-type guy who was a fast skater and high scorer. For Rachel it was Sam, the notorious fighter with the heavy French-Canadian accent. For Amy it was Andrew, the young defenseman who liked to play rough and would occasionally get caught staring at the girls in the crowd instead of concentrating on the game. And the list went on.

We would go to every home game, no matter what the winter weather in upstate New York brought us. We would talk about hockey constantly, it seemed like it was the center of our universe. As I look back on it now, all that I can think of is how pathetic we were. I know that-somehow-in the back of all of our minds we knew that they had no real interest in us. I still try not to believe some of the things we did in those six months, driving by the house that some of the guys rented during the season, staying late after the games to talk to them. Some of us even went as far as writing our crushes notes and leaving them our phone numbers. I, thank God, never pushed that line, but it’s still guilt by association, I guess. Our stupid crushes even led to fights within the group. Some people would ’claim’ a player, and that meant that no one else in the group could like him, or there would be trouble. Or, certain people in the group would exclude other people, claiming that "it looks dumb if all eight of us are all in a big group". Yeah, right, like it didn’t look dumb with four people? It was so pointless, fighting with people who are supposed to be your friends over a group of guys who couldn’t care less about you.

We should have realized that not only would it be practically illegal for the players to hook up with us, but also that they probably didn’t want to. The vast majority of them were over 21, and most of them had a wife or a girlfriend. We would see their girlfriends or wives at the games, and we always thought that they were sluts or that they were mean. But in reality, they weren’t so bad. From what I’ve heard, a lot of them are really nice and have decent jobs. And, they probably didn’t start going out with the player by hanging around after the games and staring at them.

The madness pretty much stopped when the season ended in late March of 1999. We went back to our normal lives, without hockey. Some of us realized how stupid we had been, but I don’t think everyone in our little group did. This season, all of us still go to the games regularly, but usually not all together. Some of us know when to draw the line, some don’t. If I’m with people who want to stay afterwards and stand around and giggle and look at the players, I choose not to. I would rather go to the parking lot and sit in the car in freezing cold weather. If other people want to make fools out of themselves, that’s fine. Now, for me, it’s pretty much all about the game, not the guys. Hockey is a fast-paced, exciting sport. I guess what we didn’t realize is that it just wasn’t our time. We were way too young for those players.

Maybe I’ll try again in say, five years, but until then, I’m just going to be watching the game, not who’s playing it. But every once in a while, I’ll still comment about how cute a guy is, or how hot he looks sitting in the penalty box. Because even though I am a reformed Puckbunny, there’s still nothing hotter than a guy in a sweaty hockey uniform.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.