Tipped Off
02-28-2006, 02:31 PM
Published: Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Hobby of the heart
Silvertips booster club delivers handmade scrapbooks to create lasting memories for team
By Sarah Jackson
Herald Writer
Jessica Fry and Brynna Owens could barely sit still.
They were waiting in a meeting room on the top floor of Everett Station last week, clutching one large carrying case each.
Inside each expensive-looking tote was a giant scrapbook. More than 4 inches thick and more than a foot wide, they are jam-packed, super-sized tomes.
Their arms hugging their precious packages, these Silvertips fans, it's clear, were about to hand over their babies.
"I don't want to give it away," Owens said, bringing hers closer to her chest.
"We have separation anxiety," Fry confessed.
Fry, Owens and 23 other dedicated Everett Silvertips Hockey Booster Club members have been working on these massive one-of-a-kind memory books for team members for more than eight months.
And this night - as Owens put it - was the "reveal."
If there was any doubt about scrapbooking being one of the most dominant and fastest-growing hobbies in the nation, this is proof: Scrapbooking is no passing fancy in American culture.
Fry and Owens, roommates from Lake Stevens, have been chronicling the entire season - the public lives, really - of goalie Leland Irving and center Peter Mueller, respectively.
On the ice and off, from games to meet-and-greets with fans, Fry and Owens, age 31 and 26, have been there to capture the boys in action.
They've filled the scrapbooks mostly with photographs - taken almost exclusively by Owens with her digital camera - and have also organized each page by theme with every game of the season represented.
There are highlights of specific power plays, blocks, fights, spills, even other teammates' most memorable moments.
Game details and editorial comments pepper the pages with an attention to detail that's hard to believe, given that these women are not personal friends of the players, merely assigned by the booster club to, well, boost.
Fry and Owens realize that scrapbooking isn't necessarily the guys' passion. But that doesn't make their craft any less meaningful.
"We're trying to give the books personality so they kind of match theirs and their personality on ice," Fry said. "Part of doing this is seeing their reaction."
Parents, many of whom live in Canda, Europe and California, will especially enjoy the books.
"Even if they don't appreciate them now, in five, 10, 15, 20 years, they can break these out and show their kids," Owens said of the boys, adding that they won't be young and athletic forever. "You're putting together something very intimate, in a way. It's their life."
When the young men (age 16 to 20) arrived, they were shy at first, milling around in one corner of the room like they were at a high school dance.
But after grabbing sandwiches at a buffet provided by the club, eventually the players partnered off with their scrapbooking angels, waiting at numerous tables.
Fry and Owens (both dedicated hockey fans) waited for their guys to finish eating to avoid any tragic spills or splotches on their works of art, still nestled in their bags.
Finally, it was time to break out the scrapbooks, and Irving and Mueller, a bit overwhelmed by the attention, were awed
"This is unbelievable," Mueller said, after paging through the majority of his book. "I don't know what to say. This is so cool."
Owens, delighted and gratified, could only giggle and smile at his reaction, adding that Mueller wasn't always easy to photograph with his fast moves.
"I remember that save!" Irving said to Fry as he noticed a photo showing the puck bouncing off his glove as he does the splits in front of the net.
"You have to be pretty creative to do this," Graham Potuer said to his scrapbooker, Sharon Cook of Marysville, sitting at the same table as Irving and Mueller. "You'll see a picture that wouldn't mean anything to anybody else, but you remember everything that goes along with it."
"That was delay of game," Cook explained, showing Potuer a shot of him in the penalty box.
"Oh, yeah," he said, humbly. "I think I hit an 8-year-old girl in the nose with that puck."
Fancy patterned papers, cardstock, stencils, rubber-stamp imprints, stickers, engraved metal tags and calendars with key dates, scores, wins and losses - any accent you can imagine - make the scrapbooks unique expressions of the women behind them (though a few men are known to assist).
Kevin Nortz / The Herald
McLeod savors Lammers’ reaction as he flips through the scrapbook she spent months making for him. The booster club’s scrapbooking program is in its second year. Every player receives a book.
It's hard to convey the monumental amount of work and money it takes to put these scrapbooks together.
It is easy to spend four to five hours on a two-page layout, Cook said. And costs for the hundreds of photos and books can add up too.
Photography, printmaking and organization are time-consuming on top of hours of deliberating on design, not to mention following the team, even to some away games, usually more than a day's drive from Everett.
Fry, who attended away games with Owens, also managed to obtain pictures of every arena in the Western Hockey League to fill a modest request Irving had made when prodded about what he might want in his scrapbook.
"It's amazing," Irving said, tickled that Fry succeeded. "It's full of pictures, so it's something you'll remember forever. It's a history of the season."
Though Fry and Owens were already into scrapbooking, some fans are newcomers to the craft, such as Katrina Johnson of Marysville, who has missed only one home game during the Silvertips' existence.
When the scrapbooking program started up last year, she took classes at Creating a Good Book in Marysville and has learned many techniques, enough, in fact, to help her do her cousin's wedding book this summer.
"You just get better as you go along," Johnson said, adding that scrapbooking can be surprisingly addictive. "I can spend like 12 hours straight scrapping and forget to eat."
Jackie Haus of Silver Lake, who made a book for Silvertips head coach Kevin Constantine, said scrapbooks provide lasting memories - and a kind of immortality - like no other medium can.
"It's a hobby of the heart," Haus said. "It's very deep. This will be here long after I am gone."
Constantine was impressed. When he was growing up, scrapbooking was primitive.
"It was just glue and newspaper clippings slapped on every page. This is so far beyond that. There's so much behind the artwork, the thought," he said. "It's phenomenal."
Will these books actually make the players perform better as they head into the playoffs?
Maybe, maybe not, Constantine said.
But it will give them a profound understanding how they are valued in the community. That, he thinks, will make them play harder and with more pride:
"We have, probably, the best fan base in the league, but I think events like these let players know how deep the support really is, a bigger picture of how much this town really cares about us."
Hobby of the heart
Silvertips booster club delivers handmade scrapbooks to create lasting memories for team
By Sarah Jackson
Herald Writer
Jessica Fry and Brynna Owens could barely sit still.
They were waiting in a meeting room on the top floor of Everett Station last week, clutching one large carrying case each.
Inside each expensive-looking tote was a giant scrapbook. More than 4 inches thick and more than a foot wide, they are jam-packed, super-sized tomes.
Their arms hugging their precious packages, these Silvertips fans, it's clear, were about to hand over their babies.
"I don't want to give it away," Owens said, bringing hers closer to her chest.
"We have separation anxiety," Fry confessed.
Fry, Owens and 23 other dedicated Everett Silvertips Hockey Booster Club members have been working on these massive one-of-a-kind memory books for team members for more than eight months.
And this night - as Owens put it - was the "reveal."
If there was any doubt about scrapbooking being one of the most dominant and fastest-growing hobbies in the nation, this is proof: Scrapbooking is no passing fancy in American culture.
Fry and Owens, roommates from Lake Stevens, have been chronicling the entire season - the public lives, really - of goalie Leland Irving and center Peter Mueller, respectively.
On the ice and off, from games to meet-and-greets with fans, Fry and Owens, age 31 and 26, have been there to capture the boys in action.
They've filled the scrapbooks mostly with photographs - taken almost exclusively by Owens with her digital camera - and have also organized each page by theme with every game of the season represented.
There are highlights of specific power plays, blocks, fights, spills, even other teammates' most memorable moments.
Game details and editorial comments pepper the pages with an attention to detail that's hard to believe, given that these women are not personal friends of the players, merely assigned by the booster club to, well, boost.
Fry and Owens realize that scrapbooking isn't necessarily the guys' passion. But that doesn't make their craft any less meaningful.
"We're trying to give the books personality so they kind of match theirs and their personality on ice," Fry said. "Part of doing this is seeing their reaction."
Parents, many of whom live in Canda, Europe and California, will especially enjoy the books.
"Even if they don't appreciate them now, in five, 10, 15, 20 years, they can break these out and show their kids," Owens said of the boys, adding that they won't be young and athletic forever. "You're putting together something very intimate, in a way. It's their life."
When the young men (age 16 to 20) arrived, they were shy at first, milling around in one corner of the room like they were at a high school dance.
But after grabbing sandwiches at a buffet provided by the club, eventually the players partnered off with their scrapbooking angels, waiting at numerous tables.
Fry and Owens (both dedicated hockey fans) waited for their guys to finish eating to avoid any tragic spills or splotches on their works of art, still nestled in their bags.
Finally, it was time to break out the scrapbooks, and Irving and Mueller, a bit overwhelmed by the attention, were awed
"This is unbelievable," Mueller said, after paging through the majority of his book. "I don't know what to say. This is so cool."
Owens, delighted and gratified, could only giggle and smile at his reaction, adding that Mueller wasn't always easy to photograph with his fast moves.
"I remember that save!" Irving said to Fry as he noticed a photo showing the puck bouncing off his glove as he does the splits in front of the net.
"You have to be pretty creative to do this," Graham Potuer said to his scrapbooker, Sharon Cook of Marysville, sitting at the same table as Irving and Mueller. "You'll see a picture that wouldn't mean anything to anybody else, but you remember everything that goes along with it."
"That was delay of game," Cook explained, showing Potuer a shot of him in the penalty box.
"Oh, yeah," he said, humbly. "I think I hit an 8-year-old girl in the nose with that puck."
Fancy patterned papers, cardstock, stencils, rubber-stamp imprints, stickers, engraved metal tags and calendars with key dates, scores, wins and losses - any accent you can imagine - make the scrapbooks unique expressions of the women behind them (though a few men are known to assist).
Kevin Nortz / The Herald
McLeod savors Lammers’ reaction as he flips through the scrapbook she spent months making for him. The booster club’s scrapbooking program is in its second year. Every player receives a book.
It's hard to convey the monumental amount of work and money it takes to put these scrapbooks together.
It is easy to spend four to five hours on a two-page layout, Cook said. And costs for the hundreds of photos and books can add up too.
Photography, printmaking and organization are time-consuming on top of hours of deliberating on design, not to mention following the team, even to some away games, usually more than a day's drive from Everett.
Fry, who attended away games with Owens, also managed to obtain pictures of every arena in the Western Hockey League to fill a modest request Irving had made when prodded about what he might want in his scrapbook.
"It's amazing," Irving said, tickled that Fry succeeded. "It's full of pictures, so it's something you'll remember forever. It's a history of the season."
Though Fry and Owens were already into scrapbooking, some fans are newcomers to the craft, such as Katrina Johnson of Marysville, who has missed only one home game during the Silvertips' existence.
When the scrapbooking program started up last year, she took classes at Creating a Good Book in Marysville and has learned many techniques, enough, in fact, to help her do her cousin's wedding book this summer.
"You just get better as you go along," Johnson said, adding that scrapbooking can be surprisingly addictive. "I can spend like 12 hours straight scrapping and forget to eat."
Jackie Haus of Silver Lake, who made a book for Silvertips head coach Kevin Constantine, said scrapbooks provide lasting memories - and a kind of immortality - like no other medium can.
"It's a hobby of the heart," Haus said. "It's very deep. This will be here long after I am gone."
Constantine was impressed. When he was growing up, scrapbooking was primitive.
"It was just glue and newspaper clippings slapped on every page. This is so far beyond that. There's so much behind the artwork, the thought," he said. "It's phenomenal."
Will these books actually make the players perform better as they head into the playoffs?
Maybe, maybe not, Constantine said.
But it will give them a profound understanding how they are valued in the community. That, he thinks, will make them play harder and with more pride:
"We have, probably, the best fan base in the league, but I think events like these let players know how deep the support really is, a bigger picture of how much this town really cares about us."