She scores!

An hour before Sydney's first hockey game, her nerves were in overdrive. She didn't want to play. She was too nervous. She was never going to score a goal. Even a pep talk from Daddy and reassurances from Mommy couldn't stop the tears.

 

Eventually, we calmed her down. But then she found out she had to ride with me in the blue car. And she started crying all over again. She wanted to ride in the minivan. But Daddy was driving AJ to hockey practice at a different arena at the same time (in other words, if anyone has a right to cry, I'd say it's me and Jeff for already having to deal with crazy scheduling logistics.), so she had to ride in the blue car.

 

Life can be so stressful when you're a Mite 1.

 

But then a funny thing happened. We arrived at the arena and found our locker room, where Sydney saw the rest of her teammates, who were all pretty excited to play. And suddenly Sydney was excited, too.

 

 

She proclaimed, "Hockey is my favorite!" She was ready to skate!

 

 

By her third shift, she was changing lines like a seasoned veteran. Which means, like Pavlov's dog, she remembered to turn around and head to the bench any time she heard a loud buzzer sound.  

 

By her fifth shift (the two lines rotate every two minutes), Sydney finally touched the puck.

 

She's actually a better skater than AJ was at this stage, but she seems to lack his aggressive and competitive nature. She's out there to skate and really couldn't care less about the puck, net, score or other players. For a while she seemed mesmerized to skate and look up at the pretty lights on the scoreboard.

 

 

But at least she kept skating. When she fell or got knocked down, she got right back up and continued to skate. I saw players laying on the ice for way longer than necessary for no apparent reason other than to get attention. Other players hung out at the boards during their shift, whining to their parents. And one boy on Sydney team tried AJ's favorite first-year move of planting himself in front of the net in hopes the puck would come to him.

 

But Sydney kept skating.

 

And then, a few minutes into the second period, an amazing thing happened. It looked like the boy who had been hanging out at the net had a brief conversation with Sydney. He then skated a short ways away, leaving her in his spot at the net. I started to worry that he'd told Sydney to stay there. But then, as if on cue, the puck came to him. He turned, flailed a bit to keep from falling and somehow hit the puck and passed it to Sydney, who turned and nudged it about two feet into the net.

 

Goal!

 

From that point on, both she and the boy skated with the rest of their line. Neither scored again, but for that one moment, they demonstrated incredible teamwork. Probably by accident.

 

But it was enough for Sydney to come off the ice beaming, "I scored a goal!"

 

And as expected, she now can't wait for her next game.