What an Experience!

Let me start by saying sorry to all of you who had hoped to follow along play by play with us here on line.  It is now 10: 15 pm on Friday and this is the first moment I have had to sit down and write about what is happening here.  It has been a non stop whirlwind experience.

I will start from the top.  We traveled to Pelham in several different groups and on several different airplanes.  Some of us made it to the hotel earlier than others.  In fact, the last group to make it arrived around 2:00 am Wednesday night (Thursday morning).  This was after a canceled flight and several lost bags, the most important of which was Paiute’s gear (our goalie)!  The airlines would do absolutely nothing to help us retrieve his bag and so we played the first two games of the tournament on about 3-4 hours of sleep, for about 5 of the team members, and borrowed goalie gear!!!  It was a disaster for sure.

Things turned around later that afternoon when all of our bags finally arrived.  That said, our record on the ice was not to improve.  We lost all four of our games and have now been retired from the tournament.  Hockey is everything here, and the level of play is FAR superior to anything we have seen on the West coast, North or South.  In my opinion, the teams we faced here could beat any team out of the Pacific division with reasonable ease.  Their skill in the fundamentals of hockey: passing, skating, and shooting is fantastic.  Their commitment to disciplined team play is admirable.  In most cases, it was the latter that made the difference.  The unselfish (REALLY unselfish) play was a true display of their desire to win as a team and to play as a single unit, not a group of individuals.  It was inspiring and humbling to watch.  Hockey in our area has a long way to go to get to this level of consistent growth and play.  I am excited to watch that growth!

To give you an inside look at how hockey lives here, imagine having 15 rinks in a 5 mile radius.  Imagine having a pro shop with several full time, fully skilled employees that is two stories tall and filled with everything you could ever want in hockey gear and the knowledge to properly outfit you.  Imagine showing up to a tournament and not having goalie gear.  What do you do now?  Here’s what happened to us. The tournament director personally drove us to the big pro shop whose owner met us there 2 hours before they officially open.  He then completely outfitted Paiute with everything from skates (custom sharpened I might add) jock, pads, glove blocker and chest protector.  Paiute had his helmet and sticks.  Now here’s the extra cool part.  Other than the skates everything was BRAND NEW!  The owner said, just bring it back when you are done!  I have never imagined such hospitality.  Truly amazing.

I could go on and on about this place and how much hockey is a living, breathing part of the experience, but I will stop with that save to say that this has been a humbling experience that will change the way our team plays hockey in Southern Oregon.  We plan to come back here and challenge the best again.  We plan to step into this new level of hockey and embrace it, learning what we can to improve how we coach and how the kids play.  Although we did not realize our dreams of coming home with the international championship, we have learned many valuable lessons that will bring us closer next time.

In the end, we are STILL one of the 16 best pee wee B teams in North America.  That is something to be proud of.  Congratulations to our team for all there hard work.