The weekend Ty has been looking forward to all hockey season finally happened. This past Friday I took the kids (plus their cousin Nolan) up to Barrie for Ty's first overnight hockey tournament. (Iain met us up there after work).
What a great day that was! Ty's team was pumped to be there and they were on fire for their first game. Probably one of Ty's best games of the year. They won too which always makes for a fun time in the dressing room after the game. It was nice to be able to go check into the hotel after the game and take the kids swimming, for a bite to eat and then relax and watch a movie before the next game.
Iain made it just on time for the 2nd game. The outcome of that one wasn't quite as good but the kids worked hard and still had a great time. There was another Whitby team playing in that tournament so we were also rooting for them to do well - and they did. They ended up winning the tournament. On day two we enjoyed a relaxing morning - had a nice breakfast in the hotel and then had a bit of excitement as we found out the main highway that we had to take back to the arena had been closed due to strong winds blowing the snow causing poor visibility, so we spent a lot of the morning planning an alternate route. It all worked out though and we all made it there on time.
There was unfortunately a moment though that I got a glimpse of what my future as a hockey parent probably holds, and it didn't sit well with me at all. The opposing Whitby team made it known that their "inspiration" to win their next game was to send our Whitby team home. The history behind this is - our team is in first place in our regular league and their team is in 4th (last) place. I guess the coaching staff felt that by telling their boys they would eliminate our team from the tournament if they won the next game they would have more drive to win. My problem with this is that a lot of these boys are friends and they are 6 and 7 years old. We came into the tournament hoping their team would do well b/c they are the underdogs, they really needed a win to boost their confidence and they are our boys friends. Of course our boys caught wind of it and Ty in particular took it pretty badly. Ty would consider one of the boys on the other team to be his best friend and when he heard that their two teams were being pitted against each other he was no longer rooting for his friends team, a rivalry had been formed... that left a very bad taste in my mouth. Anyway, I guess this is the way it is with hockey and I'm going to have to get used to it. In the end the underdogs won and I'm very happy for those boys and although I've heard nothing but positive feedback about those coaches I will not look at them quite the same way again.
