MARLBORO, Mass. It’s Sunday night at the New England Skating Center, and Butchie Dorr is casting a longing glance at a Pee-Wee Hockey tournament final that’s about to begin in one of this facility’s eight ice rinks.
“No fair–that’s an illegal tutu!”
“I may sneak over later to watch some of it,” he says with a guilty look on his face. “When Chrissie ain’t on the ice, that is.”
Dorr is a “hockey dad” in a region where offensive language and even fatal violence between fathers on opposite sides of the ice is not uncommon, but tonight he’s shepherding his 11 year-old daughter through the semifinals of the Ernie Scalzo Ford & Subaru Winter Figure Skating Tournament. “Usually my wife takes Chrissie and I take my son to hockey,” he says ruefully, “but Butchie Jr.’s got a long division test tomorrow and Gail don’t trust me to do the right thing.”
“You call that a salchow? My snowplow could do a better salchow than dat!”
With his son’s math grades hovering in the C- range, Butchie’s wife decided that an intervention was necessary. “I coulda left them alone while I covered Chrissie,” she says sternly, “but those chowderheads woulda ended up watching the NHL All-Star Game or sumpin’.”
So Butchie finds himself in the stands here as a succession of young girls dressed in sequins goes through their routines, while he sits restlessly waiting for his daughter’s turn. “In hockey, they all skate together–boom, you’re out of here in an hour,” he says. “This could go on all night.”
So partly out of habit and partly out of boredom, Butchie decides to “crank it up a notch” as he looks at the other spectators, mainly parents, who watch the young girls go through their paces. “This is like a freakin’ tea party,” he says as Mei-Lin Ling, a young Chinese girl whose parents have made great sacrifices to advance her career, takes the ice.
Butchie’s tongue has been lubricated by a few Bud Lights purchased in the snack bar, and as Ling goes through her opening jump–a Salchow–he launches into a series of taunts designed to throw the odds-on favorite off her game. “Why don’t you go back to China,” he yells at the top of his lungs. “They eat puppy dogs for dinner over there, don’t they?”
“Why is that man yelling at me? I’m so cute!”
Lin appears at first to be unperturbed, but at the mention of the pets-as-entrees canard she crumbles and falls to the ice. A few heads turn in Butchie’s direction, but he assumes an expression of offended innocence. “I guess she got a case of nerves,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders. “You got to be ready when your turn in the spotlight comes.”
Next up is Ilanya Yakovlevski, a Russian who has come to the U.S. to train under American coaches and possibly defect in time for the 2018 Winter Olympics. “A Russki, huh,” Butchie says with a sly grin on his face. “I know how to push their buttons.”
Yakovlevski begins her routine, and her early training in ballet shines through with each graceful movement of her arms. “Hey you freakin’ Commie!” Butchie yells, upsetting her rhythm. “Who won the Cold War, WE won the Cold War!” he chants and looks–without success–to others in the chilly rink to join him.
The Russian girl swoops into the corner as she prepares to accelerate for her signature movement–a double toe loop–but Butchie is on her like a duck on a June bug. “U-S-A–U-S-A,” he chants as he bangs on the glass, a disruptive technique that is accepted in youth hockey but generally frowned upon among figure skating parents. “OVER-RATED,” he yells, then bangs his big asbestos-worker’s paws together in a “clap-clap, clap-clap-clap” rhythm. “OVER-RATED,” he continues, and Yakovlevski swings too far off the center of the rink to successfully complete the jump without crashing through the “dashers,” the boards that line the rink.
The judges mark Yakovlevski down so far she bursts into tears, and her skating coach comforts her as he scours the rink for a new student who stands a lesser chance of being deported once her temporary skating visa expires.
It’s time for Chrissie Dorr’s performance, and Butchie takes his seat again, attentive as only a doting father can be. A woman behind him struggles to open up a bag of chips, making an irritating crinkling noise that Butchie can’t overlook.
“Shhh!” he says with a finger held up to his lips. “This is freakin’ art you got goin’ here!”