Champions!!!!!!!!

Congrats to our champions!!!!!!  We had a wonderful weekend with our hockey family in Orlando. Of course, the cherry on top was our U-14 AA boys winning the championship.  At a number of different times during the game, they seemingly felt compelled to make it interesting.  Alas through hard work and team work, they persevered and they won the championship game.

Goalielocks saw little action in the first, which is a difficult situation for a goalie.  Goalies need to see some shots to get into a rhythm, so protracted periods of no shots are tough.  Nevertheless, he wasn’t happy with his level of play even though they won and he got second star of the game.   Such is life as a goalie.  The good news is that’s why you practice.  He can work on improving the things he felt he didn’t do well this weekend and work on maintaining what he felt he did well.

I’ve written about it previously, but its hard to believe how old and grownup these kids look.  Many of these kids started out together as mites in 1st and 2nd grade and now many have started high school.  They used to be so small that their legs would dangle from the bench in the penalty box since they couldn’t touch the ground.  Now they’re ginormous and take up all the room in the box with both their size and smell.    Irrespective of the change in size, they remain the same sweet smiling kids they were in mites albeit with an expanded vocabulary.   All kidding aside, these kids are amazing.  They’re hard workers, gritty, fierce competitors, but also good teammates and good friends.

The tournament did a great job putting on a nice show for the championship games.  These things may seem small, but I’m sure they make a world of a difference to the kids playing in those games.  In addition to the introductions, they also had an announcer and some pretty sweet music.  Even better though was the fact that all of our families, which are spread throughout the world, could watch the game live.  For my parents in Minny, it was an awesome opportunity to cheer for their grandson and his team from afar.

The Mayor’s team did not walk away with a championship, but they had a blast this weekend.  I can see that they’re excited to hit the ice together as a team, which is amazing.  My Mayor is the kind of kid that goes all in when he does something and I love.  He’s small, but he’s the fiercest competitor I know.  He works his butt on and off the ice to be the best he can be for his team.

This morning his team played a consolation down in Kississimee.  Sadly,  I missed most of because I had to get Colin’s gear to the other rink in time.  I was super bummed that I had to miss the Mayor’s game because him and his team are so much fun to watch.   Shortly, after I departed he scored a pretty sweet goal.  One of the team dads, who is totally my hero, videotaped the goal and sent it my way.

The best part of all of this was how the Mayor told me he scored his goal. As he told the story, very little of it had to do with what he did.  He spent most of the time detailing what his teammate did to facilitate the goal.  The Mayor couldn’t say enough about the awesome pass he was fed by his Boy B that led to the goal.  I can’t lie it was pretty cool to hear him heap the praise on his teammates because he gets it.  He understands that no matter who scores the goal, it took a team effort to get there.   Notwithstanding, the Mayor loved sharing the details of his post goal celebration.

All in all it was a good weekend filled with great hockey and even greater people.  Quite frankly, it takes a lot of energy to survive these weekends due to the lack of sleep, increase in alcohol intake and increased stress from watching the games. All things considered, these tournaments have left us with many priceless moments.  There’s no doubt in my mind that I should probably educate myself on some mindfulness techniques for before, during and after Goalielocks’ games.