Perfection Learning Corporation

Beartown

Alina

“You can’t live in this town, Maya, you can only survive it.”

Neither of them has any idea just how true that is.

Why does Kira care about hockey? She doesn’t. She cares about a person who cares about hockey. And because she dreams of a summer—just one—when her husband can look his town in the eye without lowering his gaze.

That’s why he doesn’t see his team the same way everyone else does, because even if Kevin is the best player he isn’t always the most important.

Kevin might be the star, but Benjamin Ovich is the heart of the team. Because Benji is like David: he’s prepared to do whatever it takes. So ever since he was small, the coach has drummed one single idea into him: “Don’t pay any attention to what people say, Benji. They’ll like us well enough when we start winning.”

She’s a single mother with three daughters, but it’s this seventeen-year-old boy who worries her more than anything. A boy who cares too little about the future and frets too much about the past: nothing could depress a mother more. Her little Benjamin, the fighter with whom it’s far too easy for the girls of Beartown to fall in love. The boy with the most handsome face, the saddest eyes, and the wildest heart they’ve ever seen. His mom knows, because she married a man who looked just the same, and nothing but trouble lies ahead for men like that.

The other guys keep warning him he’ll get kicked off the team if David finds out he smokes weed, but Benji just laughs, secure in the knowledge that would never happen. Not because Benji is too good to be thrown off the team, definitely not, but because Kevin is too good. Kevin is the jewel, Benji the insurance policy.

All organizations like to boast that they’re building a culture, but when it comes down to it everyone really only cares about one sort: the culture of winning. Sune is well aware that the same thing applies the world over, but perhaps it’s more noticeable in a small community. We love winners, even though they’re very rarely particularly likeable people. They’re almost always obsessive and selfish and inconsiderate. That doesn’t matter. We forgive them. We like them while they’re winning.

Of all the things in the world you can be envious of your best friend for, this is what Kevin would most like to have: the ability that Benji has always had to not give a shit about anything, and to get away with it.

Say what you like about Beartown, but it can take your breath away. In a single second.

A simple truth, repeated as often as it is ignored, is that if you tell a child it can do absolutely anything, or that it can’t do anything at all, you will in all likelihood be proven right.

Beartown quotes

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