Oh Canada

We embraced our Canadian heritage (sort of), not to mention our affection for the Great White North, by taking part in some genuine Canadian sports. N has expressed interest in hockey, but playing hockey is rather involved and takes some planning, organization, and a whole lot of gear. This partly stemmed from seeing some friends who were playing organized hockey, and being the shameless dad that I am, thinking that N could skate circles around those boys.

The league is designed to teach kids how to skate/play hockey and prepare them for organized play, which is the next step. We missed the entire season, but were invited to come to the final practice. Since we were late comers, we decided to simply go and watch, and then assess whether it was something we wanted to do. I was interested to see what the level of play was.

It turns out that there were all levels of players, there were even kids that could not even skate. They just wore the gear and kind of stood there, holding onto their milk crates. The age range was 3-9 years old, which would place N in the high-middle. These kids have been skating together for the past 2-3 months, and being the shameless dad that I am, I have to say that N could have skated circles around 99% of them, though one or two of the older kids skated well.

We didn’t get to take part, but it was more of a reconnaissance mission, and I’m glad we went, because I think it made N realize that he can do this. They have a summer league that preps kids for the Fall, when the games begin. This should be interesting.

On the subject of Canadian sports, N has also expressed interest in watching (thankfully not playing, at least not yet) curling. I’m not sure where this spark came from, but he has continually asked if we can go and watch curling for the past several months. Union Arena has a curling league, and they play every Friday night. We never make it because by Friday we’re ready to enter the vegetative state. This past weekend, they had their final match, and then they were going to remove the ice.

It was on a Sunday, so there was no way we weren’t going to check it out. It was interesting, I still don’t understand the game, but N was excited to go. With the exception of one spouse, we were the only ones in the audience, but that didn’t matter. We had our first curling experience, and maybe not our last.

That’s a lot of Canada for one weekend. Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to creative daw for the pic.