Guess What This Man Gets To Do

November 24, 2024 5 min read 2 Comments

This is Rick Reed, 66, in the water. You will have to read the story below to see what he does on top of the water on Sundays.

By Ray Glier

Rick Reed, 66, can walk on water and he does it on Sunday mornings, no less.

People say Rick can also “stand on his head” with 42 pounds of athletic gear strapped to his body. Wow! And when he flops, there are cheers, not jeers.

This man in his 60s sounds like he is ready to eat the world he's having so much fun.

The picture above didn't give it away, but the pictures at the end of the story will.

Reed’s Geezer Jock thing is as a hockey goalie.

In his 60s and still playing a game he fell in love with at 15, Rick's short story deserves a small bite of your time.

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If you look anywhere on the internet for the 10 sports most played by older people, playing hockey is NOT on the list. The most physical you get is pickleball because of the ball smacking your jaw (basketball is not on the list). There is swimming, running, lawn ball, golf, etc.

But hockey? Getting hit in the face, or throat, by a disc of vulcanized rubber, or accidentally-on-purpose being run into by another skater, is not on the recommended menu of sports for people over 60.

That’s why we are here today, and every Saturday. Geezer Jocks who spit into the wind by being competitive for fun in any sport are worth reading about.

**

Rick is the backup goaltender for two teams who get together for pick-up hockey every Sunday morning. He gets to play every couple of weeks when one of the two starters is absent. The water he walks on is, of course, frozen.

A netminder in hockey who makes saves of rapid-fire shots is said to be “standing on his head”, a colloquialism from 1918 when goalies were first allowed to leave their feet in the NHL. “They can stand on their head as far as I’m concerned,” NHL commissioner Frank Calder said.

“I can deal with one to three shots in a row, but then the fourth shot will generally go in,” Rick said about the acrobatics of “standing on his head”.

And the flopping? Reed will do anything to stop the puck including throwing his body on top of the biscuit.

“The good thing,” Rick said, “is that I can get back up.”

The skaters at Nazareth Ice Oasis would have retired Reed if he didn’t have some skills besides being able to stand up after falling down. You can see from this video he can move his feet side to side and get down to block a shot and...get back up.

“If there's a low shot wide left or right, I'm pretty fast at putting my leg out and blocking with my pad,” Rick said. “That's probably my best skill. I'm also pretty good with my glove. I don't always catch the puck, but I'm generally able to knock it down to make a save.”

Why is he so good at going side to side? Reed does a 5k run/walk/run every morning. He rides his bike to work every day. He swims 2,000 yards on Saturdays, which no doubt helps him swim (sort of) on top of the water Sundays.

“I’m not much of a skater, but I’m pretty good at letting the puck hit me in the face,” Rick said.

**

Rick’s real life job is crisis management for San Mateo County in the San Francisco Bay area.

His hockey hobby is crisis management of another sort.

In these pickup games, it is a constant barrage of the net, one crisis after another if you are the goalie. After all, this is supposed to be fun and scoring is fun so the skaters want that puck on their stick to whip into the net. Everyone is a forward, except Reed. He is not the last line of defense in many games. He is the only line of defense.

“We don’t keep score, but I’ve played well if I let in anything fewer than six (goals) in 75 minutes,” Rick said.

I didn’t want to equate Rick’s job, which some days can be evacuating people from danger zones, with being a hockey goalie, but he understood the point of the question.

“You gotta make quick decisions in your job so, yes, there is sort of a parallel between crisis management and being a goaltender,” Reed said. “I think about that sometimes and how both jobs are trying your best to mitigate a bad situation.”

Standing in goal is the only job Rick wanted in the sport. He went to an NHL game when he was 15 to watch the expansion and not-very-good California Golden Seals at The Oakland Coliseum.

Gilles Meloche, who is 74 now and a special assistant to the general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins, was the goaltender for the Seals. Reed was enthralled by Meloche and the impact of the goalie on the game and the nerve it took to play in the semi-circular crease.

“Goalies are wired differently, we're kind of a breed apart,” Rick said. “We enjoy that challenge of being shot at, trying to knock it down.

“So I just think it's just in my wiring. Other players don't really understand why we do what we do. And I don't think there's much explaining it. You've either got the gene, or you don't.”

It could also be that Reed saw his mother handle a crisis and deal with it. Her husband, Rick’s father, walked out on the family and his mother raised two boys.

Then there were the two Canadian kids, his pals, who put 15-year old Rick in front of a garage door as goalie and sent pucks flying at him, as per their Canadian heritage. Before he got all his teeth busted out, a kindly neighbor bought Rick a full set of goaltender gear, mask included, probably the equivalent of $2,000 today.

Reed was the goaltender of the ‘B’ team at a local rink and he still is thrilled by that magical season.

Real life collided with dreams and Rick was working in Emergency Management and then got hired by the Godfather of Silicon Valley, Intel. It was quite a ride around the world for 25 years basically handling the crisis that happens routinely for a behemoth, like Intel. The company thought so much of Rick, it paid for his PhD in Psychology.

When he was laid off in 2023, as Intel disintegrated, Reed went to work for San Mateo County. Throughout the turmoil of changing jobs, Rick has had hockey for 16 years.

“I'm super grateful to have the opportunity because I realized not everyone has that ability or that opportunity,” Reed said. “So I'm grateful. If I have any advice at all, as my wife (Roberta) always has advocated, it is just to keep moving, to keep your body moving.

“I'm not trying to do anything heroic. I just move my body every day. And, as a result, I'm fortunate that most of the parts work… most days.”