INGS PARK, N.Y., Feb. 22 - Patrick Cavanaugh is slight, blond and a little goofy. Dana DeMartino is a pretty girl with thick dark hair, a hefty build and a stubborn streak. He's 8; she's 9. Different as they are, at the Superior Ice Rink here, where hockey is the reason for being, they're equally precious commodities. Every team needs someone like Patrick or Dana, someone with unusual athletic predilections and an emotional makeup that might be considered eccentric. They're goalies.

For many young people at Superior and many more around the country, hockey, as well as other sports, becomes a focus of their lives and the lives of their families. And that is true for Patrick, who plays on a travel hockey team (he will be in Marlborough, Mass., for a tournament this weekend) and, with practice and lessons, is on the ice four or five times a week.

It is also true for Dana, who plays on an in-house recreation league team at Superior, and expects to play travel hockey next year. Her father was a professional goalie at one time himself, and she has caught his enthusiasm.

Is her father tough on her?

"Yep," she said. "I get mad at him sometimes when he blames stuff on me."

Does she mind?

"Nope," she said.

Such devotion to a sport at such a young age is, for many children, pressure enough. But goalies have more, an added stress that even avid hockey parents sometimes won't let their children endure. For one thing, goalies are, of course, human targets.

For another thing, like a quarterback in football or a pitcher in baseball, a goalie bears a disproportionate responsibility for a team's success, and there is no position in sports that is so naked a candidate for blame. As Richard McGuigan, who owns Superior and runs both the recreational leagues and the travel hockey program, put it, "Every one of a goalie's mistakes is counted on the scoreboard."

Yet players like Dana and Pat seem to relish hurling themselves into the path of a flying rubber disk.

"I love it," Pat said about playing goalie. Asked if he was ever afraid of the puck, he shrugged. "I got used to it," he said.

It's probably true that Patrick and Dana have yet to understand the full implications of what they've gotten themselves into.

"At this age, the kids aren't too cruel," said Matt Galioto, a former college player who coaches goalies at Superior. A goalie, he said, either has to be naturally confident or have a short memory. "When they get older, and they have a bad game, it can be tough. It's not fun. My son plays on Pat's team, and he wanted to be a goalie. I wouldn't let him."

At the arena, goalie parents are easily spotted, typically separating themselves during games and looking palpably nervous, no matter how the game is going.

Frank Fusco, whose 11-year-old son, J. R., is a goalie, said he worried even more when the puck was mostly at the other end of the rink, especially early in a game, because that meant J. R. was more likely to lose focus.

"He can have three good games in a row," Mr. Fusco said, "but then there's a bad one. Then it's time to be a father."

Requirements to play the position make goalies different from their teammates on the outside and on the inside. They have to wear so much equipment - 15 to 20 pounds' worth - that, swathed in pads, they move with stiff-limbed awkwardness, Frankenstein's monsters on skates. In practice, they have their own routines, working on moving quickly from post to post in the goal mouth, dropping to the ice on one or both knees and clambering back up.

For Dana, who weighs about 75 pounds, and Patrick, who weighs less than 60, that's exhausting exercise. They will literally grow into their positions; right now, even on skates, Pat and Dana stand as tall as the goal crossbar.

"Skating with my pads on is the hardest thing," Dana said, and Patrick agreed.

The bigger distinction, however, is psychological. Goalies, after all, are solitary figures on the ice, representing the last line of defense.

"When you win everybody loves you, when you lose everybody blames you," said Matt Murnane, a 13-year-old goalie. He was asked if he had any words of wisdom for Patrick and Dana.

"It's a hell," he said. "It's worth it, though."

Parents of goalies routinely say that watching their children play is excruciating; parents of other players sympathize and count their lucky stars.

"I don't know how you can be a goalie's father," said Bruno Odoardi, with a shudder. His son, Nick, 14, is a defenseman.

Early last Saturday morning, Patrick's father, Ed Cavanaugh, director of operations at the Time Warner Center in Manhattan, was on hand to see his son play at a rink in Smithfield. His team, the Long Island Royals, was winning big, and Pat was slouching in the goal mouth.

"Pat, you ready, Pat?" Mr. Cavanaugh called out, and his son straightened up with a jolt.

Mr. Cavanaugh said he himself tried to stay alert to the effects that playing goalie might have on his son. A year ago, Mr. Cavanaugh said, after a losing game, Pat was uncharacteristically low.

"It was 10-2 after the second period, and you could see his confidence was way down," Mr. Cavanaugh said. "That night he didn't want to go to practice. But that hasn't happened since. Luckily he hasn't had that many games where he's given up weak goals and cost us the game."

Mr. Cavanaugh said his other concern was how much hockey was too much hockey.

"It's become a year-round thing," he said, "with camps and clinics and all that, and it's almost like if you don't do it, you fall behind, you know?"

Later that morning, back at Superior, Dana put her talents on display in a recreation league game. The players, ages 6 through 9 (including a handful of girls), were distinctly less skilled than the players in Patrick's game.

But Dana's father, John DeMartino, an engineer, had made sure to place his daughter on a weak team so that she would get the maximum amount of practice.

"The more ice time the better, and hopefully she'll stick with it," Mr. DeMartino said, adding a joke, or perhaps a half-joke: "Though she's got no choice."

Making save after save, some of them remarkable, Dana kept her team in the game, though she was eventually overwhelmed by a barrage of shots.

Dana was tired, her mother, Faye, noted; she'd had a hard practice the night before.

Mr. and Mrs. DeMartino are at all of Dana's games and practices. They stood in a corner of the rink, where Mr. DeMartino's body language mimicked his daughter's, as though he were making the saves along with her, and he kept up a stream of coaching patter: "Cover the thing, Dana, my goodness! Don't keep giving them chances!"

He also peppered her with praise, and after one especially fine save, he called out to the coach, "Hey Joe, you better buy her dinner!"

Mr. DeMartino said they hoped to send Dana to the Portledge School in Locust Valley, the only high school on Long Island with a girls' hockey team. Beyond that, he said, "I want college."

Mrs. DeMartino said that there was "no doubt" that her husband was living through their daughter, and that she did make an effort, sometimes successful, to keep his enthusiasm in check.

But it's also evident that father and daughter have a good relationship, and Mrs. DeMartino said hockey has bolstered her daughter's self-esteem. Dana is an average student, Mrs. DeMartino said, but her ability to concentrate seems to be improving.

After the game, Dana came off the ice, proverbial steam coming out of her ears.

"Ooh, she's mad," Mr. DeMartino said with a laugh. And indeed, she was angry enough that she wouldn't respond to questions.

Asked if they worried whether being a goalie put undue stress on their daughter, the DeMartinos said they didn't think it was too much.

"You've got to blow it off," Mr. DeMartino said. "That's what I tell her."

Mrs. DeMartino said that initially Dana was tense, especially before games. "She felt pressure from the other players and parents," Mrs. DeMartino said. "I felt that in her. But later I think she realized there are rewards. It's been a very good experience for her."