Excellent

Stoo-pen-dus practice this morning. Small group of die-hards! Again, I was the least-best, but it's good to play with women (and high schoolers) of excellence, it moves me up a notch in my game.

We did fast drills all morning. Stuff that left me sore!!! My favorite drill today -- well they were all great-- but our last drill of the morning, a chase drill, was my favorite. We played a wing position on the boards, ran a puck up to the net with someone hot on our tail. Fast, fast, fast! Note to self: maybe practice some sprint running. I was never good at a fifty-yard-dash, and essentially that is what we were doing, on skates. Running the puck toward the net, taking a shot, stopping and then chasing the next person while they ran the puck to the net. Whew!  Totally useful in a game. Totally killed my calves and shoulders. Shoulders? Yeah. I was swinging my stick in front of me, both hands grasping it (so picture me holding it across my body) as I chased and it really worked my shoulders, but it also gave me some speed, swinging your arms will always speed you up.

We also did some drills involving position-play. We were in a wing, center, defense or "chase" position practicing chaos to get control of the puck and looking up to find our teammates for a pass. It was good. I'm not good, but the drill was very good.

AND, I got an email about some sessions that will be available before our tournament next month so we can get some warm up time on the ice. Extra skating?! Count me in (after I check the family schedule of course).

It's my long weekend, no work for four days. Looking forward to winterizing a few things, getting the yard cleaned up and relaxing. Lets start with a hockey game tonite. OKAY!

A note to you guys:  I call them "chase drill" or "position play" because its what I want to call it, not what the coach called it, it's just my way of describing it. So any hockey know-it-all who wants to correct me, fine. But I'm still gonna call them what I want. Definitely don't go play some hockey and say "well that girl on her blog said its called a chase drill." 
(I don't know, just felt the need to put that out there.)