First of all, the rest of my gear was accidentally delivered to a vacant house on my street, then after a few phone calls they showed up at my door. Everything fits fine, except the sticks are a bit short. I dont think I ordered Junior sized sticks, but they barely come up to my chin without skates on.
As of Friday, my plan was to go to the Beginning Hockey class at the Valley Ice Center in Panorama City on Saturday morning. That plan didn't quite work out, but I'll get to that in a bit.
Friday night I literally said, "How the fuck do I tape my stick?" It was too late to get anyone to show me in person, so I went to good old YouTube. Turns out the HowToHockey.com guys have a couple stick taping tutorials which were exactly what I needed.
I think I did okay.
So I got all my stuff on and realized how hot everything is. Even without doing anything I was sweating. It is an interesting feeling though. Being mildly invincible is fun.
So on Saturday I made my way over to the Valley Ice Center to take my beginning hockey class. It turns out the class I wanted to take had been moved to Wednesday. So I ended up in a Hockey 101 class. I basically dropped into week 10 of a 10 week class of mostly 8-9 year old kids. These kids were pretty much done with instruction and were just basically there to scrimmage. Fortunately a friend tagged along, so I wasn't the only guy on the ice over 4ft tall.
So there I am, doing hockey drills with 20 9 year old kids. I did better at skating with the puck than I thought I would. It actually takes my mind of the skating part. The funniest part of this was on one of the drills, I ran into the goal and fell on my back. I think those kids were laughing, but I didn't care, so was I. Then the coach guy pulls everyone together and starts making teams for the big scrimmage. Im looking at the other adult in the class saying, "Are we really going to play against these kids?"
"I guess so"
For some reason we were both on the same team, so it was two giant guys, plus two small guys against four small guys. Fortunately we had a pretty good hockey player on our team, cuz I not only need skating lessons, but I need to work on my stamina. There were no line changes and those kids didn't need breaks. I was begging for a water break but it didn't come.
Even though it was against kids, I think I played okay. What I lack in skill, I could make for with my reach. I don't want to get into stats, but I did score a goal, it ricocheted in off one kids cage and anothers helmet. I felt bad so I apologized. Through all of this, I was wondering how hard we were expected to play. I wasnt going to check any 9 year olds, but I didn't want to leave the other kids on our team hangin out to dry, so I played hard on defense, and tried to set up the kids on my team to score. I see myself as a two-way playmaking center. Hahah!
So now I guess I need to start going to stick time regularly, and maybe a private skating lesson will do the trick.
I skated hard for about an hour with minimal breaks, so therefore I was pretty sore the next day. The tips of my toes hurt, my ass, my lower back and my hands were all pretty sore. On the second day, the soreness pretty much doubled. It was a good kind of soreness though. I should stretch more beforehand.
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