Shitty is preparing for law school, and Jack is working with agents to try to go pro in the National Hockey League.

In the second year, the focus moves away from hockey and more toward the players, especially Jack and Shitty, who are both seniors and graduating at the end of the year. Bitty spends most of the first year convinced that Jack hates him, but by the end, they are tentative friends. However, afterward, he is given an award for embodying team spirit and enthusiasm, and Jack is once again voted in as team captain for the next year. The year ends with the team going to the playoffs in the spring, but not advancing to the finals. The son of a high school football coach, he is nervous about it (he grew up in a small town in Georgia and so it is implied that he has experience with homophobia), but Shitty tells him it is a non-issue, that the team has his back. Near the end of the fall semester, Bitty comes out as gay to his teammates. Bitty improves his skills, and during a game against Yale, Bitty scores the winning shot. Jack, the disgraced son of famous hockey player Bob Zimmerman, tries to help Bitty acclimate to checking with an impromptu early morning “check clinic” at the ice rink in order to help Bitty conquer his fear. He also is terrified of being checked: he tends to panic and assume the fetal position on the ice, to the consternation of his teammates and coaches. His initial expectations are quickly dashed-his new team has lamentable hygiene, the players rough-and-tumble sorts, unlike Bitty. The freshman year starts as Bitty is in his dorm room, excited to be at college. Interspersed throughout Bitty’s narrative are short interjections (called “Hockey Shit”) from Holster and Ransom, who explain hockey terminology and culture to the nonprofessional reader. He also must make friends with his new teammates, Shitty (no one knows his real name) the duo Holster and Ransom Jack, the captain and son of a hockey legend, who has a lot to prove Lardo, the diminutive female team manager and Coach Hall. His hobbies include vlogging and baking pies, and although he played hockey in high school, he is terrified of getting checked.

Bitty is a former competitive ice-skating junior champion from a small town in Georgia, who attends Samwell University in Massachusetts on an athletic scholarship. The webcomic runs for all four years of Bitty’s time at university the first volume contains the first half of the series (freshman and sophomore years), with the second volume* to cover the other half of the series (junior and senior years). Written and illustrated by Ngozi Ukazu, the coming-of-age story follows freshman Eric “Bitty” Bittle as he navigates the college hockey landscape and comes to terms with his identity as a young gay man. Check, Please: #Hockey (2018) is the first of two published volumes of a long-running sports webcomic by the same name that started in 2013.

Ngozi ukazu check please