Ray Pride

By: Jon Billings

Ray and I became friends through our daughters’ Pride Hockey program. It’s an amazing, challenging program designed for young women who take the sport seriously and want to play at the college level. In 2001 the Pride did a hockey road trip to Norway and Sweden to play against college level and Olympic prep programs.

Kush Sidu, the amazing coach of the Pride, decided that parents had to room together as opposed to getting individual rooms for solidarity’s sake. My son Jeb who was 11 was traveling with me.

When Kush disclosed this housing rule I immediately broke into a cold sweat. Jeb broke into a cold sweat.  I looked over at Ray. He was pale. Our simultaneous gulps were audible. We knew we were going to have to shack up together. Not at all what we had in mind.

We were determined to make the best of it. With a lot of bravado Ray, Jeb and I carried our bags up to our room when we arrived at the old hotel in the middle of nowhere.

It was a tiny old pale green room with a tiny single bed and an old television set. Silence and more sweating. Then Ray realized that there was a Murphy bed in the wall. He yanked it down. It settled next to the other bed. More sweating... then like any good father I gently told Jeb he would be sleeping in the middle. He flatly refused. Silence. Ray retreated to the bathroom to wash up and change. I think we all slept in our street clothes. We grunted goodnights and turned off the lights. Its dead quiet. Jeb whispers to me he can’t sleep. I whisper back that we can do multiplication tables. Ray is literally a foot away from me. We get through the 8’s and Jeb whispers it’s not working. I whisper back that we can say the Rosary.  Ray springs from the bed and with that Ray optimism suggests watching TV immediately. It might have had one channel.

And there the 3 of us spent the remainder of the night...tucked in together.

One of my claims to fame is that I slept with Ray Tiernan!