Around 11:15 p.m. at US Bank Arena in Cincinnati, I shut my laptop off and put it into my bag after filing my last story of the weekend.
I walked around the curtain that cordoned off the media work room from the Zamboni pit and looked up at the still illuminated jumbotron.
A green intertwining “ND” bounced back and forth on the screen above, for North Dakota.
I watched as three little birds that had been in the building all weekend flew by and huddled together on the rafters.
They hunkered down for the night in the darkened stadium, waiting for sleep as the lights dimmed in the rink.
The camera crews were long gone, and the scoreboard that had once shown “Ferris St. 1, North Dakota 2” had turned off.
I felt a sense of relief watching the birds. The action was over, and they, like me, could relax a little. Ferris hockey was done for the year in the Elite 8, in albeit a sad way.
The season was truly exhausting. The Bulldogs threw every storyline in the book at the reporters in Big Rapids. Though it was an incredible series of events to watch, it’s better left a memory while my mind recuperates from the madness I witnessed.
It’s time to not “Worry about a thing,” in the words of Bob Marley.
I thought ‘No season could ever be that intense start to finish again, could it?’