The Boy Has Some Skills

Second skate and shoot for T. 

Near the end of the session, the goalie from the adult scrimmage goes in net at center ice where the kids are scrimmaging.

T’s not scrimmaging, he’s just grabbing loose pucks and skating in to take shots, some of which the goalie lets go by, so T’s happy about that.

On his last shot, though, T’s coming straight in with the puck.  He shifts his weight and lifts his stick a bit to take a shot and the goalie moves to cover him, but T swerves left, takes the puck with him and then gives it a little backhand tap into the net!

It was a very nice little move that he did at-speed (his, at least) – he should be proud of that shot, I know I am.

Looking for a Future Division - Redux

Tonight there are Division C-Gold games … annotated as “novice” on the schedule.

I come in mid-game and I’m immediately disappointed.  If this is “novice”, then I’m an even worse skater than I thought I was.  I knew I needed to work on things, but I didn’t realize how far I have to go.

There’s a C-Silver division, that might be what the guy at RDV meant as the “rookie” division, but I think I’ll probably have farther to go than I expected even for that … I need the GWFDAL*-division.

 

*Guys Who Fall Down A Lot

Boy-child’s First Skate and Shoot

Okay, that was fun.

After checking out the skate and shoot Monday, I decided to bring T today.  The rest of his gear arrived, so he’s well-padded and ready for some more ice time.

Unlike last time, when I just skated around trying to control the puck, this time I had an eleven-year old of roughly my own skill-level to play with (all the other eleven-year olds there being far beyond my level).

We practiced passing – a lot different on ice with a puck, than it was in the garage with a plastic ball. T took some shots on the empty net at center ice. And we just chased each other around in the neutral zone trying to steal the puck from each other – it was a blast.

I like the skate and shoots, so far, but I’d like to find a time when they’re less crowded.  The scrimmages at either end seem to get a bit more aggressive as time goes on and come further and further over the blue line -- it’s unnerving to watch a herd of guys four times his size bear down on the little guy and weave around him.

Looking for a Future Division

In a couple months T’ll be done with learn to skate and then we’ll both take a learn to play class.  After that, I’m pretty sure he’ll be ready to play on a team, but I’m not so sure about myself. The kid’s picking things up and improving a lot faster than I can.

Tonight I go to the rink to watch a game in the 35+ division – I am, after all, getting up there, so maybe this is where I need to set my sites on playing.  I want to get an idea for what my target skill-level needs to be to join a team.

Things look promising at first … lots of grey hair, lots of missing hair, some bellies.  I might be able to keep up with these guys … then the puck drops …

Old and slow?  Right.  Older and slower than when they played in college, maybe.

Not where I’ll likely ever be playing, but a fun game to watch.  I need to stop by and watch games here more often.

My First Skate and Shoot

So how, exactly, do we get from the boy-child’s skating lessons to me being on the ice in full hockey gear?

The progression of logic is as simple as it is horrifying:

• Boy-child needs ice time;
• Skate and shoot is recommended;
• I should be on the ice with him and should check it out beforehand;
• Although the rules say, as an adult, I only need a helmet and gloves, I realize I don’t bounce so good anymore;

See? I was clearly required to buy a full set of hockey gear today. There was no other logical option.

So me in a locker room – haven’t been in one since high school and didn’t like it much then.  Putting on all this gear for the first time. 

Yes, realizing there’s still a tag on the elbow pads and pulling it off quickly while hoping no one saw.  Of course that had to happen …

Onto the ice and looking around because I have absolutely no idea how this works or what’s going to happen.  Thankfully a few seconds of watching make it clear.

Nets at either end of the ice and one in the neutral zone against the boards between the two benches.

There’s a goaltender at one end with people taking shots and shots on the empty net at the other end, so it looks like center ice will be a fairly safe place for me to stay.

I grab a puck and set out to practice just being able to control it and skate at the same time – back and forth between the blue lines or cross ice.  And I don’t think I do too badly.  For the most part, I can keep it on my stick, even when I’m stopping and changing directions.

I pick up the pace, too, of both skating and stopping, and I’m pretty happy that I can mostly keep the puck with me when skating at a reasonable speed (for me, at least) and when reversing directions quickly.

When I get off the ice I realize something, though: forty-five minutes of skating is one thing – forty-five minutes of skating in twenty-five pounds of gear is quite another.  I’m exhausted and sweating like a pig.

I got my hockey stop

Now I haven’t skated much over the years … maybe twice a year since 1995 or thereabouts, so I’m okay, but not great.

I can make it around the ice reasonably quickly, snowplow stop and if you watch long enough (or possibly use a time-lapse camera) you can see me making progress when I skate backwards.  You have to pay attention, though, to the casual observer my backward skating looks remarkably like someone dancing the Twist.

But I have never been able to do a hockey stop. 

I’ve tried, but mostly I just wind up turning or spinning in a circle.

Well, today I got it.  Something clicked and I was able to start getting a feel for it early in the skating session.  I was still mostly turning, but my outside skate was scraping more and slowing me more, then all of a sudden the turn went away completely and became an actual stop.

I can still only do it with my right foot – turning so my left foot is outermost feels incredibly awkward, but I can work on that.

So I spent most of the rest of the session at center ice skating a little between the cones:

Skate-skate-skate-stop, skate-skate-skate-stop, skate-skate-skate-stop.

I’m rather proud of myself, actually.

Boy-child: Lesson Three

Proper shin and elbow pads, plus a jersey one of the coaches gave him last week and T is starting to look like he means business.

At the public skate after class he keeps his shin pads on and starts going to his knees and sliding like they taught him in class today, but that’s not good in the crowds so I have to tell him to stop.

So now I have a dilemma.  I want to get him more ice time so he can practice what he’s learning, but he can’t do those things in public skating.  The staff recommends taking him to skate and shoots, but I’m a little wary of that. Those’re going to be full of people who already know how to play and he’s barely starting out.

Second skating lesson for the boy-child …

We arrive at the ice and I have him wearing his bicycle elbow and knee pads … I haven’t had time to find some for him and Play It Again Sports doesn’t have any used.

Well, he heads for the far end of the ice where the highest-level group is and I think, “uh, oh … he was only supposed to move up one level”.

Nope … I assumed that, but not so.  They bumped him up to the highest level in the class.

The boy-child’s first lesson

In a new pair of gloves and used helmet and skates from Play It Again Sports, the boy-child takes the ice for his first learn-to-skate lesson.

To my eyes, he seems to be doing okay.  Not falling down a lot or anything.

After the class, he tells me he’s getting moved up to another group.  They’d split the class into four groups on day one, and T was in the second group.  I figured, cool – he’s moving up a level.

I talk to the coach and she tells me he should have elbow pads, shin pads and a stick for that level.

Well, a couple sets of pads … not that big a deal …

Dementia has clearly set in …

Forty-two years old …

Largely sedentary for the last decade …

Never played organized sports in my life …

Raised in sunny Florida …

Obviously I’m the perfect candidate to start playing ice hockey.

No? Not obvious? So how did I get myself into this situation?

Born in Minnesota (okay, hockey-country).  Never played, never went to a game, and moved to Florida when I was about six.

Florida was not hockey-country in the seventies and eighties.  Far from it.  Summered back in Minnesota, but not a lot of hockey in August even there.

I remember my grandfather took me to one hockey game when I was a kid.  A USA-USSR exhibition match – but I didn’t really understand the game.

Then in 1995 Orlando got a professional hockey team, the Orlando Solar Bears.  The guy I worked for at the time had season tickets and gave me a couple one day, so I went to a game.

I don’t remember who one or lost or even if a goal was scored on this play, but I remember seeing Mark Beaufait take the puck from one end of the ice to the other – around and between players from the other team like it had been choreographed. 

In that one skate from end-to-end of the ice, he made me a hockey fan.

Within a month I had season tickets of my own and for a number of years rarely missed a game.

But I never considered playing … my ideas of sports for me were:

• Golf: Hit the ball, drive the cart, pay the drink girl;
• Bowling: Roll the ball, eat a cheeseburger and fries until it’s my turn again;
• Kayaking: Can be strenuous, but you get to do it sitting down;

Hockey looked like a lot of work for people a lot younger than me.

In 2001 I met my wife, who had two children at the time.  I took the kids to games with me occasionally, until the season ended with the Solar Bears winning the Turner Cup and the IHL folding.  No more hockey.

Another team, the Florida Seals, came to town, but problems with leagues and management and switching playing locations made it more difficult for me to get to their games.

The point of all this is to set my now eleven-year old son’s (I adopted my wife’s kids) exposure-level to hockey:

• Half a season of watching the Solar Bears when he was two;
• A few Seals games at three, four and five;
• Very few games on television;

So why, over the years, hasn’t he shut up about it?

He used to take a plastic stick and puck and skate around the kitchen in his socks “playing hockey”.  Half a decade since he’s been to a game in person, and he still wants to play. 

But we’re twenty miles from the nearest ice and hockey is not exactly a cheap sport – and the boy-child sometimes has issues following directions and following through on things, so I didn’t want to commit to the time and expense only to have him quit after a couple practices.

Well, earlier this year, my wife brought home a Try Hockey Free flyer from RDV.  So, for free, I’ll take him to spend an hour on the ice.

Equipped with rental skates, RDV-supplied stick and gloves, and his Spiderman bike helmet, he went onto the ice for an hour of drills … and damned if the little snot didn’t listen to the coaches, do what they told him to and get better at every drill. And he comes off the ice smiling and happy.

I try to see if he’s serious.  I tell him it’s hard work, it takes a lot of practice, he’ll have to do the same thing over and over again to get good at it (he hates that). He still loves it, he still wants to play.

So I sign him up for Learn to Skate: Beginner Hockey.  All I need to get him for that is a pair of skates, a decent helmet and some gloves.  If he doesn’t stick with it I won’t be out all that much money, right?

Learn to skate is about ten weeks – after that there’s a learn to play class he’ll have to take and I notice that there’s an adult learn to play class immediately thereafter.

In the misty, distant picture of the future I have, I think “that might be fun”, when he moves up to learn to play, I’ll take it too …