Hockey Tournament

After four months of hockey practice, the boys finally made it into a hockey game! Saturday night, they played in a 4-on-4 tournament. The format was great. Every minute the horn blew, and both teams had to change their entire line. As such, the boys got a lot of play time. They mostly played defense, and they did really well holding off the opposition. In fact they made it all the way until the point that John turned to me and said, "Do you realize that the other team has never scored when they are on the ice." (I don't think John will be tempting fate with comments like that at their next game!) The tournament had four teams, so they ended up playing three games. Their team tied the first game, and lost the next two, but the boys didn't mind -- they were happy to be on the ice playing. I'm sure the coach's "good job!" to them helped as well. Other than those few words, he didn't speak a lot of English -- and I know the boys didn't understand his pre-game pep talk or any other coaching tidbits. Well, they did understand when to go on the ice -- a head tap and a point translates into any language.

I had a lot of fun watching. This is probably the only time that both boys will be playing on the same team. They really shouldn't even be on the same team now, but the club is playing C.J. down since he had never ice skated prior to joining the team/club. I thought it would be a problem for games, but the coach didn't seem to think so. At least I don't think he thought it was a problem -- he never responded to my email asking about it. If anyone had asked C.J. about his age during the tournament, he'd probably just stare back at them blankly anyway. I guess that's one advantage of not knowing the language.
Here's Brendan at the end of the night -- a tired, sweaty, but happy player!We went out to dinner to celebrate at a new (to us) Italian restaurant.

John took some video, but I'm not sure when he will get it uploaded so that I can post it.