Being a Hockey Parent

[E.J.]

Strange, look at those last two posts and a month ago, frustration....this one, pleased..... Guess we hit the meat of the schedule and are on a roll.... Those early losses still sting when I think about them....ugh....

[Ahbroody]

Figured I would put his roller blades to good use as he says he doesnt want to play roller hockey next year.
little 4th july workout.

Last Saturday.

Decided instead of driving an hour and paying money to use a hockey treadmill, I would just make him skate parking garage ramps. Garage is 4 floors because it has an underground level so for him its an ass kicker. Hes usually wasted after 4 trips to the top. Also doing a little running. My goal is to get him to run a 5k with me by end of summer like abbs did.

Video bizznasty tweeted the other day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozDD...e_gdata_player

[E.J.]

Like that first pic, him going around the corner.....


First all girls hockey came in Utah..... The Little One was a bit nervous dropping her off, but was as good as gold once she went into the locker room....

[E.J.]

[E.J.]

While the girls worked....we went and did a little work ourselves....including some lunch...

[E.J.]

Kids finished the 2 day camp with a kick ball game(actually had a pizza lunch and talk, just after this, but it was the last activity)








Recovery beverage.....

[Ahbroody]

Man you look like your working way to hard. Awesome photos. Love it when you can see they are having a great time.

[Ahbroody]

The boy and his buddy are going to sneak into a Jr. Sharks tryout prep clinic this week. Supposed to be 04 to 02. Signed them up and I am sure they will blend in except for size. Even that shoukd be fine as there are usually some small 04s which they will be as tall as. The blackhawks have been doing a skills skate 2 times a week preping for tryouts. He got moved uo to the squirt group with them and has been busting his arse. Getting closer to age 8 and seeing that mental jump and inderstanding starting to happen. Shoukd be a fun year. Tryouts next weekend. Hes already on team but got him going hard this weekend and this week to look his best

[E.J.]

Tell M good luck, I'm sure he's going to crush!

[Ahbroody]

Two 05s in a 04-02 clinic. Got a lot of attention and were by far not the worse kids. Had a lot of kids asking how old they were and who they were trying out for.

[E.J.]

Look at that flow....

[Eleven]

Hey EJ how old is your son? My kids U16 team has joined the NJPHL and I see there are 2 Utah Grizzlie teams, a U16 and U18.

Just wondering if your son still plays there?

[E.J.]

Originally Posted by Eleven

Hey EJ how old is your son? My kids U16 team has joined the NJPHL and I see there are 2 Utah Grizzlie teams, a U16 and U18.

Just wondering if your son still plays there?

He's a '96, so moved to U18's this year and jumped ship to the Regulators.... Didn't even go to Oly's(the coach) U18 Grizzlies tryout. I'm interested to see who is on that team(have yet to see a roster) though & how they'll compete.

[E.J.]

Ouch....here we go! Cash goes out, practice time fills up, travel plans being made.... Going to be a busy 7 month!

All that said....yiiipppeeee!!!

[E.J.]

Just registered for the Lady Lightning U12 team that the Little One has been invited to play on. Should be interesting. Extension of the U14 Lady Lightning, which to date, has been our only youth girls travel team. Really, the only youth level all girls team locally. They have been really competitive and I think related to that success, they are trying to grow the program. That is apparent with the formation of this team, as well as a U16 tournament team.

The U12 Lady Lightning team will play in a "Squirt" U10 house league that is made up of 95% boys. They are a special entry team, most the girls will be playing on one of those other house teams with the boys. They will not practice as a team, just play 17 games. They are going to try to see if travel to a few all girls tournaments is viable.

The kicker, a few of the girls....my daughter included, are playing on travel teams, which would normally preclude them from playing house league. I am interested to see how they are going to compete.

I am sure that we will have more than our fair share of conflicts and probably only play in 10ish games(total guess), but when I ask the Little One about it, she was all in. She REALLY loves the Lady Lightning coach, who will also be coaching this team as well.

[Ahbroody]

Nice should be interesting to see how the girls hang against boys given the ages of some. Should be a great learning experience for her and the speed increase should be good also.

There was a little drama during hawks tryouts. Two kids I would have liked on the team got snatched by the team M quit last year with the ahole coach. The club didnt register a mite team till after tryouts. This way they could lure kids parents by offering them squirt spots. The club is garbage nobody good stays there past squirt and they lost their main rink last year as the owner turned it into a strip mall. Now they are using a 3/4s size rink. For the peewees and under and possibly a rink an hour away for others. I guess they were scared so they manipulated rules to keep kids whos parents dont understand their kids will ride the bench. Whats worse is both the kids are undersized 2nd year mites and are playing squirts. One is an emotional train wreck because his dad rides a the $ hit out of him. We played games with him this I summer and the kid was constantly crying. Hell at tryouts M literally beat up a kid who was hitting and slashing this kid because he couldn't take care of himself. Yet. Hes going to play squirt? All these nut bag parents thinking their kids going pro. You hear them talk and they are crazy. What is worse was both boys really like each other and wanted to play together.

For us no inline this year. We are doing Hawks Mite travel which is really just a local tournament team and inhouse squirt likely or maybe mite. The Sharks Youth Hockey organization was named one of USA Hockeys four model programs so we dont know if the boys can play up anymore like they allowed in the past.

One thing I have noticed is skating the ramps has greatly improved Ms speed and stamina. He is the fastest kid on his team and two kids that were close to his speed last year are definitely slower now. They did liners last practice and he destroyed everyone not even going all out. At school they had all the kids run a lap and he was the fastest kid in his grade. Not bad.

[kugie]

My Youngest just started the learn to skate.

My Little Helmet head

I'll have more of my Daughter and Other son soon

[E.J.]

Scott,

Went to the U16 Grizzlies game yesterday to see how they looked. They dominated their competition(Boise Jr. Steelheads), but not sure what that means. Breakout looked REALLY good, solid D. Their goalie plays for our HS team, though is not currently the starter(who knows if that will change). I am interested to see how they(U16’s) and the U18’s compete in Michigan in a couple weeks. Assume you guys will be there?

Talked with the father of the goalie I mentioned above, he says that the 18's look really good, but I still have no idea who is on that team. Guess I'll have a lot of answers by the end of the month.

We are heading to Vegas to play the Jr. Wranglers this weekend. Not sure what type of team we are going to have, but excited to get on the ice.

[E.J.]

Originally Posted by Ahbroody

going to get an ear full for this one.

....Now that is funny....

Originally Posted by E.J.

Scott,

Went to the U16 Grizzlies game yesterday to see how they looked. They dominated their competition(Boise Jr. Steelheads), but not sure what that means. Breakout looked REALLY good, solid D. Their goalie plays for our HS team, though is not currently the starter(who knows if that will change). I am interested to see how they(U16’s) and the U18’s compete in Michigan in a couple weeks. Assume you guys will be there?

Talked with the father of the goalie I mentioned above, he says that the 18's look really good, but I still have no idea who is on that team. Guess I'll have a lot of answers by the end of the month.

We are heading to Vegas to play the Jr. Wranglers this weekend. Not sure what type of team we are going to have, but excited to get on the ice.

Just checked the NJPHL website, looks like the 16's are getting their asses handed to them. The 18's won their first game(site is only updated to that game), but it appears the team they played is pretty bad.... Will see how today shakes out.

Go Grizz!

[Eleven]

Originally Posted by E.J.

Scott,

Went to the U16 Grizzlies game yesterday to see how they looked. They dominated their competition(Boise Jr. Steelheads), but not sure what that means. Breakout looked REALLY good, solid D. Their goalie plays for our HS team, though is not currently the starter(who knows if that will change). I am interested to see how they(U16’s) and the U18’s compete in Michigan in a couple weeks. Assume you guys will be there?

Talked with the father of the goalie I mentioned above, he says that the 18's look really good, but I still have no idea who is on that team. Guess I'll have a lot of answers by the end of the month.

We are heading to Vegas to play the Jr. Wranglers this weekend. Not sure what type of team we are going to have, but excited to get on the ice.

We didn't play the Grizzlies in Detroit, but we did play them this past weekend in Minnesota. Not sure how it works, but the showcase weekends are league games and it just turned out that we didn't meet up with them until this time.

The word was they were a new team? One of our kids played with one of the Grizzlies kids way way back at Mite and our parent was explaining how the team worked. She said they all eat together, bring their own food and drinks, and have a guy just for that!?!??!

She also said it costs 10k just to play, not including travel, and they fly everywhere (They certainly have to fly to all our showcases) and she also said that there are parents who help pay airfare for those who can't.

They didn't have a good weekend, but I certainly can see the potential they have. We gave them their worst loss of the weekend, 11-1. Looking at the results so far, after just 2 showcases, they haven't won a league game yet. We're about in the middle, which is what we expected. We've had a couple games that just didn't go our way. We should have gone 4-0 this past weekend but our kids **** the bed in game 2

Our boys are currently 4th out of 10 so we'll see how the rest of the season goes. I think the next showcase is in Rochester NY next month.