INTRODUCTION: Local Orange County Guy Gets to Write About Hockey

Hi Anaheim Calling readers and people who accidentally wandered in here while looking for another team blog beginning with “A”! My name is CJ Woodling and I am one of your new staff writers! The CJ stands for Charles Jerome (if you guessed what my initials stood for before I told you then 1. I don’t believe you and 2. Find me at a game and I’ll buy you a beer), but if you call me by my full name, I probably will think you’re talking about someone else, as I’ve gone by CJ since the day I was born.

I have lived in Orange County for pretty much all of my 24 years on this earth. To be completely honest, though, I’ve only been a legitimate hockey fan for about 6 years. I grew up playing baseball and running cross country and track. Hockey was barely on my radar during that time, as I was fully invested in the Angels for most of my teen years. I maybe went to a total of 3 Ducks games before 2010.

That year, I left home to attend college at University of Northern Colorado in the town of Greeley. Being in a place where I knew no one and with my Angels missing the playoffs for the first time in several years, I decided I needed a sport to watch in October. Since the Ducks were my hometown team, I started following them on social media and watching game highlights. I fell in love almost immediately. The rest is history as I fell hard and fast for this wonderful sport and the team, thanks in large part to the exciting rookie year of Cam Fowler and Ryan Getzlaf’s first year as captain.

Back to the present. I’ve now been a season ticket holder for the last 2 seasons and I may or may not have declined offers to go out in order for me to watch a Ducks road game on TV. I have also just begun getting into advanced stats as my love for baseball sabermetrics has started to bleed over into hockey.

To round out my, no doubt, totally complete picture of me in your head, I just graduated with a degree in advertising from Cal State Fullerton. I have worked in a retail store of a certain huge technology company (hint: they’re the richest company on the planet; I’ll leave it at that) for the last five years and as such am a giant technology geek. I love getting outdoors (hiking, camping, etc.) and singing harmony to songs on the radio because the melody is too mainstream for my hipster voice. I’m also looking to take part in the Ducks Learn To Skate Program because I can’t stop on ice skates and I would like to eventually play beer league hockey.

Have any questions, comments, or insults? Check me out on Twitter at @CJWoodling!