Claimed:The Hans Wingate Story Final 10/10

[CowboyinAmerica 2,843]

A Dish Served Raw: The Hans Wingate Story

 

 

Name: Hans Wingate

Age: 18

Hometown: Edinburgh, Scotland

Height: 6'5"

Weight: 232 lbs

Position: Goaltender

Team: Turku Outlaws

 

In order to make traditional Scottish dish haggis, one first needs a sheep’s stomach. As one can imagine, extracting a sheep’s stomach isn’t exactly the most glamorous work. Even once it is pulled out of the body, making correct haggis requires holding open the stomach to insert a meat mixture and oats. However, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the butcher’s haggis recipes may be his lifeblood, the thin dividing line between a successful enterprise and a floundering local hole in the wall.

 

That’s what made young Hans Wingate’s job transporting his father’s sheep hearts from the farm to the butcher’s shop of the utmost importance. He refused to let one drop or escape his grasp. And, to this day, when the puck flies in at him from the corner, he still sees the falling sheep’s heart in his mind’s eye, knowing that everything depends on his own steady hands.

 

*******

 

 

His Youth

 

Hans Wingate was born on a blustery winter day in January 1997, the son of Dona Wingate and her hardened butcher of a husband, Alan. The third of three children, all boys, Hans grew up on a nondescript street on the edges of Edinburgh, Scotland, with his father’s butcher shop in one direction and his uncle’s farm the same distance in the other. Hans was never a depressed or lonely child — his mother and father loved him, his brothers looked after him, and he maintained decent grades and a decent social standing in school. However, his father made sure to instill one key attribute in his son: the value of hard work.

 

6 a.m. meant the 10 minute walk to his uncle’s farm, where Kenneth Wingate would have been up before dawn tending to his sheep. 6:15 to 7 a.m. meant helping his uncle with the sheep, whether feeding them, tending to them, or yes, even slaughtering them. After loading up his baskets, young Hans would then walk the 20 minutes the other direction, past his house, to drop off the meats and other parts to his father’s butchery. There, he would work with his father preparing for the shop’s opening until 7:45, at which point he would scamper off the school.

 

It was never grueling work, to be sure, but it became integral to his father’s burgeoning success. And, of course, with any measure of true responsibility comes a measure of fairness. Hans learned this lesson the hard way one drizzling April morning, when he was just nine years old. Attempting to deftly jump between small ponds forming in the road, one small miscalculation sent the young boy tripping over a break in the cobblestone road. End over end went Hans; worse, end over end went the basket of meat.

 

Hans eventually arrived at his father’s shop, half in tears. Alan may have been a kind man — he knew that mistakes happened and did not scold his son — but he was a fair one too. Hans ended up having to work eight consecutive weekends at his father’s shop in order to pay for the lost profits he dropped, a punishment he accepted as just. Still, Hans promised to himself, he would never drop a basket or even a single stomach ever again. Not even one.

 

*******

 

 

His Growth

 

Hans Wingate kept his promise; perhaps he may have kept his promise too well. By the time he entered high school, Hans’s morning routine had devolved into a parkour exhibition that would make Ryan Doyle proud. What had previously been a 20 minute stroll was now a seven minute freerunning expedition, and any time that one of the contents of his basket was about to fall, Hans’s quick hands would immediate snatch it from mid-air. He was quickly growing into a larger frame — Hans measured 5’6” and 185 lbs. by the time he turned 15 — but his agility made for an intriguing physical specimen. Honestly, Hans could have played essentially any sport, be it football, rugby or even cricket. But one sport in particular always caught his eye.

 

Ice hockey has never been a particularly well-known pastime on the British Isles. Great Britain last made the Olympics in 1948, while Scotland itself last fielded an independent ice hockey team in 1993, or four years before Hans was even born. Still, some moments are left up to fate. The Edinburgh Capitals moved into the top-tier Elite Ice Hockey League for the 2005 season, just as young Hans Wingate was beginning to take an interest in professional sports. Especially as local football clubs Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian were experiencing relative slumps, the town turned their eyes to the fledgling hockey team in hopes for a winner.

 

They were sorely disappointed. Following a league finish no higher than eighth (out of 10) for each of the team’s first four EIHL seasons, most fans turned from the team. Wingate, though, remained. In particular, Hans seemed enthralled by the idea of the goaltender. He was a man of size, a player that the entire team depended on, the one who would receive the trust of his teammates to lead them through no matter what. And, of course, he was the one who always had to flash those quick hands.

 

Hans Wingate first tried his goaltending chops for the Edinburgh Youth Ice Hockey League, which he joined at the age of 13. To say he was a natural would not be wholly accurate. Sure, young Hans presented the quick hands that made him the apple of his father’s eye every morning. It became clear quickly, though, that he had not picked up any other the finer points of hockey. His concept of angles, or of a five hole, was sorely lacking. He always wanted to use the glove, not knowing that his stick could actually help. And, perhaps worst given his underdeveloped competition, he never wanted to take advantage of his large stature, instead trying to make every play by catching the puck.

 

For most kids, the lack of success would have been enough to turn off hockey forever. But Hans Wingate was one who had learned the value of hard work. The idea of being the “last one out of the gym” may be clichéd in today’s sports media world, but sources say that Wingate never stopped working if he had his choice. It was simply in his blood. 6 a.m. was going to his father’s farm. 8 a.m. was school. And now, 5 p.m. until he was dragged off the ice was hockey practice. The routine never changed.

 

As mentioned in a recent profile of Wingate’s hockey abilities, that work ethic earned him a tryout with the team of his youth, the Edinburgh Capitals. A surprisingly strong showing in that tryout earned him a chance at Edinburgh’s starting goaltender job. Winning Edinburgh’s starting goaltender job earned him a chance to show his skills to the world. That chance to show his skills earned him an EIHL All-Star selection in his very first season, as well as a tryout to the VHLM. Step by step Hans Wingate built his hockey career, using the same steely determination of a young boy trying not to drop his basket of haggis.

 

*******

 

 

His Future

 

Now, Hans Wingate stands on a precipice. Just having turned 18 years old, Wingate recently to Turku, Finland, the first time he has lived anywhere outside of his native Edinburgh. There, Wingate will be a goaltender for the Turku Outlaws, a likely S41 playoff team in the Victory Hockey League’s minors system. Already, some view Wingate as a potential first round draft selection in S43. However, there remain obstacles, not the least of which being that Turku brought in a supposedly more seasoned goaltender, Callum Sinclair, soon after his own acquisition.

 

Some scouts say that the move signals what they have been saying all along: Hans Wingate is just too raw, and without playing against top-flight competition, nobody knows what he is made of. Still, those scouts do not know the boy who woke up to arrive at his uncle’s farm at 6 a.m. Those scouts have never seen the steely determination, the unrivaled hard work ethic, and the unbridled joy that Hans Wingate possesses with the chance to play the game that he loves professionally.

 

Making haggis is hard, and it can be brutally ugly at times. But, given the proper amount of attention, sometimes it can, just as with Hans Wingate’s professional hockey career, turn out to be a delight.

[eaglesfan036 4,593]

Overview: 5/5 - Love the interesting backstory about transporting sheep hearts in Ireland. 185 pounds at age 15 is pretty giant! Seems like since he was a child, Wintergate has had the value of working hard instilled into him. Great writing!

 

Grammar: 3/3 - I didn't find a single mistake, great work.

 

Presentation: 1/1 - Love your pictures

 

Over 1,000 words: 1/1 - yup.

 

Overall: 10/10

 

FInal: 10/10

[Kendrick 4,741]

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