In this day and age??

Hockey season has officially begun--Collin played his first game tonight. They lost, but they played hard. Their poor goalie was playing with a pulled tricep muscle and they eventually had to switch him out for the goalie who will be playing for the varsity team & didn't have his goalie leg pads with him. All in all though, after the kids spend the first half of the game learning to gel with each other, they played a hard game.
But unfortunately, tonight's blog is about something else that happened in the game. At one point, Collin's stick got hung up on a player on the other team. Collin tried to get his stick free but the kid clamped his arm down onto it and refused to give it up. So of course the referee saw this and called a penalty on Collin for hooking. (And yes, I know sometimes the kids really do hook but I knew this wasn't really hooking this time. The other player was blatantly holding onto it while Collin tried to get it free.) As Collin went past the kid on the way to the penalty box, he reached out and thumped the kid in the back of the head. I was surprised by this, because Collin isn't usually a violent player. But after the game, when Collin explained what happened, I understood why he did it. Apparently, as Collin skated past, the kid on the other team called Collin the "N" word. When I heard this I was furious. Are you serious??? This isn't 1962. We're not in some podunk backwoods southern town. Who are this kid's parents? What do they teach him? I spoke with Collin's coach after the game and he told me that Collin told him about it and he spoke to the other team's coach. He assured me that the coach took care of the situation and gave the kid a stern talking to. But I'm still floored by it. I'm just proud that after Collin thumped this kid he just skated away and didn't let it escalate. He did the right thing. Too bad the other kid didn't.