Here's a brief clip of the St. Louis drill, which we ran for several weeks in a row. It involves two lines starting on opposite sides of the ice at each blue line. When Billy blows the whistle, the first skater in each line takes off, skating around the neutral zone faceoff dot, down the far blue line, and up the opposite-side boards. As she does this, the second skater in each line makes a pass off the boards and then takes off after the first skater (who at this point has just passed her and picked up the puck), and they go into the zone together (although slightly staggered). The first skater is then supposed to come to a hard stop along the boards and pass to the second skater, who shoots.

Once we've done this a few times, Billy adds defensemen, who try to break up the inside-the-offensive-zone pass. At this point the first skater can either hard stop or not (we discovered that if we did, the D just came right at us and broke up the pass every time, because they knew what we were up to—and the whole point of stopping is to shake *off* the D), whatever she thinks will be most effective in confusing the D. If I can find a clip of the drill with D, I'll add it to this post later—though I doubt I have one. Once we add D the forwards are skating almost continuously, and there's no time for videoing!

Directly after our game, the Indy team played *their* last game of the season. They were a bit short, so a few of our players helped out. I didn't because I'd arranged for Al to drop the Beaner off after my game was finished; we were planning a Freeze-wide cookout after both games were over, and since it was a large time commitment for me, I wanted to make sure I shouldered my share of the childcare.

The Beaner actually watched the game with me fairly actively. I've learned that the secrets to keeping him interested for three whole periods are (1) bring at least two drinks (vanilla and chocolate soy milk this time) and lots of different snacks (dried apricots, pretzels, fruit gummis, tangelos, baby carrots); (2) bring the camera and shoot video (he likes to sing and/or commentate); (3) cover his ears when the end-of-period buzzer goes off; and (4) tell him which players are which, and then cheer actively. He'll join in.

Speaking of video, I got a couple fun clips, including this one:

...which ended with this:

There are more photos from the game in the Philadelphia Freeze Pool on Flickr, and I'll be uploading videos to Vimeo over the next couple days. (One of Molly on O and Katrin on D is already posted.)

We also talked about Tiff's goal; like me, she couldn't remember how it happened, exactly, but the rest of us remembered it being a one-timer. What's funny is that she clearly remembered my goal being a one-timer, but couldn't remember how her own went down, while I clearly remembered her goal being a one-timer, but couldn't remember how *my* own went down. Guess we've cleared that up now.

I got a bit more video of the drills last night for an upcoming post, but other than that (and the warm-up one-timer practice with Meghan), it wasn't that great a practice for me. I'm getting over bronchitis, and I spent the entire practice coughing, soaking through the two Kleenex tissues I'd brought to the bench almost immediately, sniffling, and coughing some more. Consequently, I didn't get as good a workout as I'm used to. Hopefully I'll still be able to play effectively in our game against Queenston on Saturday...

The other two goals were scored in the third period. The first was by Tiffany, in an almost identical setup to mine with A.T. again shooting from the point, and then Steph had a satisfying empty-netter at the end. (It was satisfying mostly because she skated around several opponents before taking the shot.)

Our last game of the regular season is next Saturday, when we will play the Black Widows (to whom we lost 7-0 in Harrisburg back in December, when Laurie volunteered to play goalie; she actually stopped way more shots than the score indicates, while we couldn't get our act together on offense AT ALL). Meanwhile, the Senators will face Queenston—which means all 4 playoff teams will be playing each other on the 8th as well as on the 15th & 16th. Can't wait to see how it all shakes out!

I didn't play *that* badly, and at another game I might have just thought, "bummer, didn't score" and moved on. In this game, though, I felt like I was not only not living up to my own expectations, but everyone else's, too. It's probably mostly (or even completely) my imagination, but it seemed like I could feel, and sometimes hear, the disappointment oozing from the bench. Result? Confidence = gone. I wasn't completely useless with the pall of disappointment hanging over me, which is a huge improvement over past seasons. But I was edgy and defensive and mad at myself for most of the night... and a bit depressed and annoyed at myself in the morning for being edgy and defensive and mad. Reminds me of morning-after-drinking-to-excess remorse, when you feel a little under the weather, a little depressed that all your buddies are gone, and a little mad that you did that to yourself.

I was hoping to find some joy in practice tonight (though, honestly, it *is* a little frustrating to see improvement in my shot, my skating, and my team play at practice, and yet still make STUPID moves and have no goals during games), but now I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to stay home and sleep. I've managed to contract the Beaner's cold, and I'm exhausted. Then again, it might be less taxing to go to practice than to stay home and single-parent the Beaner. Hmmm.

Whether I go or not, I plan to write about some drills we've been doing at practice that have seemed helpful. I'm still occasionally a "drill killer", as Megan says, but I've gotten the hang of more drills than I would've thought possible when I started with the Freeze, and Billy's been coming up with a few to address specific issues he's noticed during games lately. Look for video of Billy explaining the drills (and of the drills themselves) coming soon.

I think the reason is twofold: (1) I've been working on not panic-shooting from the top of the faceoff circle for years (probably unwarrantedly at this point), and (2) I've gotten faster. This means that by the time I decide I'm close enough to shoot, I've tripped over the goalie. (This is precisely what happened on my last breakaway; I decided too late to cut in and try for a backhander.)

Nielle's suggestion was that if I'm coming down the left side, don't bother to try to cut in for a backhander—just shoot from the goalie's blocker side, which is usually weaker. (She actually suggested that I fake a shot first, then shoot, but I think that's probably a recipe for whiffing in my case.) My idea of how to solve the problem was to practice with a cone in the net—or rather, at the top of the crease, where the goalie is likely to be. (Am I alone in practicing most of my shots when the net is empty? I'm assuming not, because goalies are often hard to come by, and when they're around, they want a real warmup, not some goofball sending weak wristers their way.)

I started out writing this before practice, but now that it's after practice, I can tell you what I actually did: Upon entering the ice, I got out two cones and set one near the top of the left faceoff circle, and the other at the top of the crease. (The first cone was designed to remind me to cut a bit to the inside rather than staying out along the boards.) I then practiced skating in and shooting both forehand and backhand. The very first time I executed an amazing top-shelf backhander; the rest of the time I split among lifting it ever-so-slightly into the net, missing the net entirely, and hitting the cone. However, I ALSO got the chance to practice on a real live goalie (namely, Nielle), as several of the drills involved taking the puck in and shooting. I worked on shooting from farther back, with more success than I'd anticipated. Occasionally my shots were weak or wide, but I also had some interesting scores from shots that had never been in my reperatoire before. (My favorite was a backhander that flew through the five hole; on that one, I just let fly when I was the right distance from the crease rather than waiting until I'd cut across to the far post, and I happened to be right in front when that moment arrived.)

NOW, if I can just remember to shoot from farther back in Saturday's game, stay more mobile when crashing the net (I'm usually in too close in this case, too), and visualize myself skating on an Olympic-sized rink (because I seem to be much more aggressive when I feel like I have more room to maneuver), maybe I'll finally have a point in the G column.

I thought when my blogging mojo returned on avocado8, it'd return here too, but that has not been the case. I think it's partly that I have an audience now, and I'm all too aware of it. The pressure to write something that others will not only appreciate but agree with (as to facts; it seems my game recall isn't always up to snuff) is sometimes—ok, nearly always—suffocating. I also feel like if I go back to writing about my PERSONAL hockey experiences (and this is somewhat related to the previous point about game recall), I'll end up disappointing my readers. And yet, that's how this blog started, and from whence springs the most enjoyment. I want to write about hockey the way I experience it, whether it's entirely factually accurate or not. It's about perception: perception of progress, of setbacks, of accomplishments, of annoyances.

Does this mean I should stop writing game summaries? That I should turn the focus back solely on ME, ME, ME? (I'm not sure that's even possible anymore, since my hockey experiences are all in a team environment now.) Should I try to turn this into a shared blog, where other beginners are invited to write about their hockey experiences as well? (This might take the pressure off of all of us to maintain our hockey blogs, actually.)

I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. All I know is that this blog needs a new mission statement and a new design. I think the former should come before the latter, but maybe in tackling the latter, I might decide on the former. If you'd be interested in contributing to a group blog about beginner hockey experiences, let me know in the comments or via e-mail (lori at avocado8 dot com). I might end up just discontinuing regular posting (already the default mode, it seems) and cleaning up the design to make the archives more readable.

It's now been about a month since our first game of the season against the Delaware Phoenix at home. Here's what I remember about that game:

• I skated well, but I didn't do anything spectacular.
• Shelly scored a goal.
• Our opponents had two lines, and we had four. It always seemed to work out that I was facing off against the same girl.
• I hardly sweated at all (see: 4 lines).
• We won rather easily.
• Their goalie was quite good. We had lots of chances, but the final score was only 4-0.

I have two videos from the game; the first shows Tiff, Laurie, Ruthann, and Laura noodling around in the offensive zone (sorry, couldn't see who the other D was).

The second video shows Cassidy, Carol, Laurie (I think we only had 3 Centers, so she was rotating), A.T., and Haley breaking out and going on O.

Final score.

Despite walking/running in the mornings for over a month and feeling like I was in decent shape cardiovascularly, I found myself out of hockey shape when I took the ice for our first practice on September 24. I felt a big sluggish, and the quickness I'd started to see the first signs of at the end of last season was completely absent. I could get a bit of speed going now and then, however, which was nice.

It was great to see so many women come out to play, several for the first time. We'll be having two squads this year—a UWHL C team, which will consist mostly of players from last year's UWHL D team, and a non-league developmental team—and we're sharing the practice ice to save a little dosh. We did a few drills all together, and then we split up roughly into our squads (which weren't actually decided at that point; the split was based more on whether you wanted to work on basic skating and hockey skills or slightly more advanced team drills).

I actually missed the second practice because I had to fly to Chicago for MAX (and I'm missing the fourth practice tonight because I'm in Chicago again at the moment, on my way to San Francisco), but I was there for a UWHL C/MAWHL C scrimmage on Saturday the 6th (my 5th wedding anniversary, as it happens). I was still in a bit of a fog mentally after a rough week, but that sort of fit with the ice conditions, as you can see:

I don't think I've ever been so hot in my life while on the ice. Since we only had 7 players on one bench and 8 on the other (we mixed up to the teams), we took breaks every 10-15 minutes or so to get a little extra air. Some women laid down on the ice to cool off; I skated in slow circles just to keep the cool air circulating through my gear. It was nuts (of course, the weather outside was the reason; it was in the the high 80s, which is insane.)

Anyway, in addition to fog, the video features Shelly carrying the puck into the zone, passing, and then forechecking; and Nielle, our goalie, skating out. Here's the proof that the skater in the red socks at the end really was Nielle:

I'm hoping that (a) I'll have some photos and videos to post from our first league game shortly, and (b) that the trip to San Francisco helped clear my head enough that I'll be back to my old self both on and off the ice by Monday. Stay tuned.

Of course, some women don't need a stinkin' holiday to bake. The last pickup session of the summer is reason enough to share the sugar. Evidence: Not one but TWO women brought cupcakes to last night's pickup at NE Skatezone. (And Barabara brought "beverages. Adult beverages" to share, too.) Angela's offerings even came in a specially-designed delivery system:

I left early (because I'd neglected to set expectations about when I'd be home when I left the house, and Al was having trouble getting the Beaner to bed), so I missed the Beer and Cupcakes in the Parking Lot after-party. I did, however, lift the cover of the delivery system to get a closeup of the decorations (verdict: amazing) on my way out, and they smelled yummy.

First practice for the Freeze Fall/Winter '07-08 season is on September 24. I can't wait! If you're in the Philly/South Jersey/Delaware Valley area and need a team, e-mail the team captains for more info. Beginners are welcome!

Edited to add: No slight intended to the male bakers out there—and the Macromedia Contribute team had several, to the extent that they had to draw up a schedule for when folks could bring in goodies to share. It just hasn't been my experience with coed/men's hockey teams that there've ever been baked goods brought to the locker room. It's happened several times with my women's tournament team, though.

I'd planned to wear the ankle brace under my skate, but I forgot to bring it. To be safe, I taped my skate and my shinpad tightly for extra support... and then started to wonder if I'd cut off the circulation to my toes. Oops.

I found I was a bit tentative at first (and also slow, because I'm out of shape), but as we started playing 4-on-4, my confidence went up and I skated normally. I sucked at D as usual, but since we didn't have any goalies and it didn't really matter if our opponents scored on us, I didn't sweat it too much. I managed to hang onto the puck most of the time, which is great, and my backhand shot was quite good—I feel confident I'll be able to score with it in an actual game. (With the nets down and a decidedly smaller and lower target in the offing, however, my shots tended to go over the net instead of into the little trapezoidal scoring area. A forehand shot would have served me better in this case.)

I only lasted for about 45 minutes, but that was mostly because Al had asked me to be home by 9, not because I couldn't have skated longer. In the end it was probably good I stopped when I did, though, because my ankle has been decidedly sore ever since. My hands are, too, so maybe it's not so suprising that my ankle would be, but it was so achy yesterday that I ended up having to wear the brace all day. It's a little bit of a bummer, honestly. I thought I was making such progress!

If the soreness is gone by next Monday, I'll go again—and wear the brace under my skate this time to see if it helps. If it's sore again after that, then I'll wait until the pre-season practices start before I get on the ice again. :-/

Unfortunately on Friday I did the office-chair scootch, on Saturday I attempted both a kneel and a cross-legged sit, and this morning I did the stoller-out-the-door pivot. As a consequence, my ankle is now BURNING. It's at least a 4 on the pain scale, and it'd probably be a 5 if I didn't have an ice pack wrapped around it right now. It seems to be VERY UNHAPPY with me and my routine, ankle-abusing ways.

Al said he sprained his ankle like this once, and although he got over the worst of the injury fairly quickly, he remembers feeling this constant ache-that-sometimes-escalated-to-pain for months... and then, like a canker sore that turns the healing corner and disappears without a trace, it just wasn't there anymore. He couldn't say when it went away, exactly; it just occurred to him one day that he hadn't felt any ankle pain in a while.

I suspect the story will be much the same for me. There will be lots of walking and normal activity and probably even hockey (well, for sure in September and possibly earlier), but there will also be regular re-tweaks and Advil and icing. And then, if I'm lucky, one day my ankle will just be normal again. I can't wait.

YaYa (37) passing to Spammer (10), who drop-passes to... nobody.
Also: Lolly (33) breaking out, Joan (8) falling down, and Nat (9) circling around.

For the first game on Saturday, however, the beaver (I keep wanting to type a capital B on that word for some reason) got a new outfit and a new attitude. That morning Ima had made a trip to the Build-A-Bear Workshop and gotten a Canucks jersey, hockey pants, helmet, skates, and shades for She-Be, whom I thought of as a girl but whom everyone else referred to as "him". Either way, She-Be was stylin', and s/he became the center of attention.

She-Be was the dividing marker between offense and defense on the bench, s/he was the focus of our period-starting cheers ("ONE! MORE! BEAVA!!!"), s/he was a source of inspiration, and s/he was the catalyst for lots of dirty jokes (such as yelling to the ref, "would you like to stroke our beaver?"). At one point Anne put him up on the padded pole at the edge of the glass and shouted to Rocky to look up (I think it was to rally her resolve not to let any goals in). YaYa shouted "BEAVER ON A POLE!"...and that's when I stuck my face cage in my hands.

Photos by YaYa

As to what happend on the ice, as opposed to in the locker room, on the bench, and on a pole, I'm discovering just how inadequate my notes are. What was I thinking, not taking note of who scored and how? What I did make note of was that we played better than on Friday night, and against a team that was more our level. We scored first (anybody remember WHO scored?)YaYa scored the first goal, and at the end of the first period it was 1-0. That's when Lolly gave us this inter-period pep talk. I'm glad I recorded it; it's pretty representative of her personality as a player-who-also-coaches. She's really good at pointing out both what we're doing well, and what we need to work on, while keeping the tone really positive.

Lolly giving us the lowdown.

I think the next thing of significance to happen in this game was me getting out of position in the defensive zone and leaving my point open to score. If I remember correctly, I got sucked in watching the scrabbling in front of the net and let my point get away from me; I noticed the gap at about the same time the puck came out to her. I can't remember if she shot it in herself or passed to someone in front who did, but I remember thumping my chest with my glove as soon as the puck went in and saying, "that one's on me." Duh.

I could be wrong about this, seeing as how I don't have any notes about who scored, but my impression is that Lolly scored a goal in the second period to put us up again, 2-1. The Chix then came back to tie, I believe in the third period. And... yadda yadda yadda (because I have no video or notes on anything until the final minute or so), next thing you know, my line is going out for what will probably be the last shift of the game. I line up along the boards at the far faceoff dot in our zone, and then Marie comes to Center and says something to the ref. (Oh, right, I forgot to mention: We switched up the lines a bit; Lolly moved back to D, I think, Marie became my Center, and Clarice moved up to Center the second line with Joan and Nat.) She said it without much urgency and with a fairly blank expression, so he asked her to repeat herself. "Time out?" she said, and shrugged. I started to wonder whether she was addressing the question to the ref or to me, but in any case the ref blew the whistle, and we skated back to the bench.

We discussed the option of putting a power line on the ice, and all votes were for it (I assume those not voting were at least neutral). I just shrugged and said "sure". Normally I'm not in favor of power lines, but the game *was* tied, and in this case I felt like we had at least 4 or 5 girls we could put out there who could skate well *and* score, so I didn't mind giving up my last shift. I'd had plenty of ice time, and aside from that first goal against, I felt I'd played well enough that I had nothing to prove. We put Mucky, Ima, YaYa, Lolly, and Spammer out there (which, now that I think of it, means that we had four defensemen and one forward).

As everyone lined up at the faceoff circle, it occurred to me that a video of our power line out there might be cool! I managed to grab the camera as the puck dropped and turn it on about two seconds later. Sadly, one second after that, the Chix scored on us. I was busy fidding with the camera and thus have no idea what went wrong to make the goal possible; I was mostly shocked that the second the camera went on, the puck went in.

Needless to say, this wasn't the outcome we were hoping for—nor was it, in my opinion, indicative of how well we played. But! 3-2 is better than 6-0, eh?

I got into my hockey gear, being sure to lace my skates as tightly as possible, to wrap stick tape around the left one, and to tape my shinpads (which I wear over my skate tongues) tightly at the bottom. Once I did that, the pain disappeared—it was the best splinting system I'd come across since the injury!

When I stepped out on the ice, I found that I didn't have as much mobility because of all the layers of tape (especially the one at skin level, which went up to the bottom of my calf), but I could still turn and stop fairly well—and more importantly, without pain. At the end of the warmup, I could feel my ankle, but I'd say the pain level was between 0 and 1 (I was still smiling).

The actual game is pretty much a blur of thinking about my ankle, going tentatively into the corners, and getting our asses kicked by an opponent that was clearly a level above us. I don't think it's particularly obvious in this video (which I shot during one of the two or three times we were actually in their end), but as Lolly put it, none of them had any trouble skating, none of them were confused about positioning (two hallmarks of the Rec level), and she recognized a few skaters from B-level leagues.

Yes, that's me saying "oh, crap" at the end
(from the bench, where I was shooting this rather shaky video)
On the ice for us are YaYa (37, C), Michele (50, LW), Joann (6, RW), Clarice (7, LD), and Spammer (10, RD).

I played Left Wing on a line with Lolly at Center and Deanna at Right; I believe the second line was Joan (LW), Marie (C), and Nat (RW); and the third was Michele (LW), YaYa (C), and Joann (RW). I know Michele played Left Wing, because I got confused the first time she tried to change for me (she usually plays Right :). Mucky and Ima formed one of the D pairs; Clarice (who usually plays goalie, I think) and Spammer were the other; and Rocky played goal. It should be obvious that Mucky, Ima, Yaya, and Spammer aren't their real names, but at this point I hadn't memorized their real names, so I just went by their name bars.

YaYa Mucky Ima Pornstar Spammer, Originally uploaded by yaya37ap

I don't think it was as clear to the Flingers that they were in the wrong division as it was to us; I think they just thought we were one of the weaker teams in the bracket. (We were actually about average). I heard a couple of them whine *I* want to score a goal now! when a player who'd already scored did so again. As someone who's played on a team that routinely beat other teams by multi-goal margins, I can't really fault the Fling for sending three skaters hard after a loose puck when they were up 6-0—I probably would have done the same thing, as being first to the puck is a super-high priority. (Now that I think of it, though, the two or three times we were up by *that* big a margin, we specifically *didn't* try to be first to the puck. Instead we let our opponents get it, and then tried to pressure them just enough to make it interesting. Our goal at that point was to build their confidence without being sloppy ourselves or giving up the game.)

The good news was that the Fling weren't dirty at all. I got shoved once or twice in front of the net (and once *not* in front of the net), but it wasn't like the shover did any damage. The mood on the ice was pretty good, probably because the Fling were having such a great time scoring on us, and because so many of us were just happy to skate. As Joan put it, "hey, I'M PLAYING HOCKEY!" Who could ask for more?

As for my ankle, at the end of the first period the pain was about a 1; at the end of the second it was about a 3; and at the end of the third period it was about a 4. I was seriously looking forward to taking my skates off (and *not* looking forward to the walk back to the locker room). I took the tape off when I got back to the hotel, showered, and then iced the ankle while I slept. I tweaked it a couple times during the night trying to flip over, but getting through the first game gave me confidence that I could at least the first period of the second.

Oh yeah, and the final score of this first game was 7-0. Sorry we couldn't score any goals for you, Rocky!