After I was re-introduced to hockey, you know, when I watched a BIHL game with @hirondelle, I was contacted by a guy about becoming a podcaster for his up and coming league, which sounded pretty cool.  What they wanted me to do was come to come to a few games and interview the player of the game for the SHL news.  So in the first interview after the first game, I interviewed Adrian Meyers, who gave credit to Jason "Cotsy" Cotsmire for helping them win the game.  At the time, I thought that was nice of Adrian.  As I became more involved with the hockey community, the more people talked about how great a guy Cotsy was.

When I started playing hockey, I got to meet Cotsy myself, and we immediately struck up a fast friendship.  Cotsy suffered a knee injury that had prevented him from playing for awhile. and when he came back to hockey, he talked to me about his GoPro camera and this casing he bought for it that he could attach it to the net.  I told him to bring the casing and his camera and we would get it set up.  He brought out his camera, and we set it up.  He got some really great footage from those shinnies where he had his camera set up (see photo to the left).  It was a lot of fun.  I never actually got to play in a proper hockey game with Cotsy. only in shinny, but I got to watch him play quite a few times.

Cotsy also helped out with the Flying Farangs websited, so when I took over running the it, I met up him Scott Murray at Cotsy's place so we could talk about what I had planned for the new site and also for Cotsy to transfer all the files over to me.  We spent a coupe of hours hanging out, eating pizza and chatting about the site and about hockey.  He showed me his goalie helmet collections.  He had somebody who would personalize all his helmets, and they were pretty cool.  He also showed me his hockey DVD collection, which was pretty impressive, and then he showed me his roof top balcony.  He had an awesome place really.  

Last year, in one of the SHL games Cotsy subbed in the net, on December 13, 2018. He played for TRUE hockey, which was his first game back in competitive hockey.  TRUE did lose to Aware 4-1 that night, but Cotsy stopped 35 of 39 shots, which earned him the player of the game award for that game.

Cotsy gave a great interview.  Even though TRUE lost, he was nothing but smiles.  This is the way I will remember Cotsy, always smiling and with a kind word for everybody.  No matter where I saw him, he was always smiling and happy.

On December 1st this year, Cotsy was asked to sub again, this time for Aware against Hertz.  The first period wasn't so good for Aware, but they started making a come back in the second period.  With about 2 minutes left in the second period, Aomsin, one of the refs, came up to me and asked me if there was another goalie available because a goalie was hurt.  I quickly looked at both goalies and both seemed OK, so I asked who was hurt, and he told me Cotsy was hurt.  I went over to John, to find out if there were any other goalies.  He said no as the other two goalies from the earlier game had already left.  The end of the period sounded, and I called over the Jeremy, and John, Jeremy and I talked about it and came to a conclusion.  I could see Cotsy was on his knees.  We called Scotty over and explained what was going on.  He knew that Cotsy was hurt, and we explained his options, and he asked if they could go with 6 skaters instead of dressing somebody in goalie equipment, which was fine, so he went and explained it to his team, Aware.  While we were talking to Scotty, Aomsin assisted Cotsy to the Hertz bench.  Aomsin then came over to us and explained that Cotsy was having chest pains.  I got Brad, who is trained as a first responder and told him, then I told the rink staff to call the hospital.  I'm not going to go into all the details, but this is the most helpless I've felt in my life.  I didn't like this feeling.  Cotsy was rushed to the hospital with Scotty and John going with him.

I got home that night with a bad feeling, but I spoke to Wolf and asked him to take care of Cotsy and his family.  I found out about 12:30 a.m. that Cotsy didn't make it. He had suffered a heart attack and died at the hospital.  I was floored.  @hirondelle held me while I cried.  I'm so glad she was there, I don't know what I would have done without her.  I decided to go to work the next day, but I wasn't worth a shit.  Thai funeral services last a week and often groups of friends or family will take on the role of host on certain days.  The SHL the Flying Farangs asked for a day and were given Tuesday and so on that day, all the hockey players to come in either wearing something dark SHL or Flying Farangs.  He was so loved, we had so many hockey players come to services.  I think his family appreciative that we came, and could feel the love we had for him. 

I had shinny on Thursday, which was my first time back to the rink since Cotsy passed away.  That was really hard just walking into the rink.  I'm so glad that @hirondelle came with me.  There was such a subdued feeling in the rink. People were really down, but we all knew it needed to be done, and we knew that Cotsy would want us to get together to play the game he loved.  We started with a moment of silence to show respect to Cotsy and then we started the game.  As the game went on, people seemed to feel a little better.  It was very healing for our hearts.  There was more talk in the locker room after, not the normal amount of talk, but more than before the game.  

Cotsy, you were loved, and we will miss you.  Get a shutout for me in that rink in the sky.

Always Remember:  Live and love for today for we don't know what tomorrow will bring.