One More Game

It sounds like a movie in the making: double overtime goals, a championship on the line, and an ice hockey team bound together by something far deeper than the game.

 In mid-February, Colin Dorgan’s life was shattered when his mother, brother, and grandfather were killed in a shooting at his youth hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. What should have been an ordinary night at the rink suddenly shifted into something no teen or team should ever endure.

In the days that followed, Blackstone Valley coaches gathered the players and gave them permission to step away from the team as they processed what happened on February 16. But after time, prayer, and conversation, the team made a bold decision: They decided to keep playing -- not to escape the pain, but to carry it together.

Their coach, a retired firefighter who had seen tragedy before, affirmed their decision and reminded them that the tragedy was not how the Dorgan family would have wanted the season to end.

 So they trained and ate meals together for 15 straight days. They sought counseling. And 
Dorgan later recounted that when he stepped back onto the ice, something in him had shifted. There was still grief, there was still absence, but there was also purpose.

And in the playoffs, the team began to rise.

 In one semifinal game, tied after regulation and one overtime, Dorgan, a defender not known for scoring, found himself on a breakaway in double overtime. He split two defenders, faced the goalie, and drove the puck into the net.

The game was over, and the stadium erupted in joy. And the story did not end there. The team pressed on to the state championship, enduring multiple overtimes once again before finally winning it all. They had carried one another through the unthinkable.

“It was the greatest moment of my life,” Dorgan said afterward, acknowledging that he was holding onto something deeper than victory. "Throughout all of the playoffs, even this game and the overtimes, I truly felt it in my heart and my soul that they're still with me."

 “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit,” Psalm 34:18 reminds us. Dorgan stepped back onto the ice carrying grief that could have paralyzed him. Instead, surrounded by a faithful community, he discovered something many of us forget: We are not meant to carry sorrow alone.

Where are you carrying grief this week, quietly and alone? Who might God be placing around you -- not to fix it, but to walk with you through it? And where might you be called to step back onto the “ice” of your own life, even when it still hurts?

Hope does not begin with everything made right. It begins with one small, courageous step forward -- trusting that community matters and God is with you.