This post is a follow-up to the last one, so if you haven't seen the pictures from Lucas's first day of hockey camp, go back and check them out. To be honest, it's not really a camp, since it's only an hour a day for 5 straight days, but that's what they call it so that's what I'm going with here.
As most of you know, prior to Canada, I spent the majority of my life in warmer climes (not counting the 7 years I suffered in Massachusetts). As a result, ice skating is not a skill I ever acquired. Hell, I could probably count the number of times I've worn skates (of the non-roller variety) on both hands and maybe a foot. Due to my lack of experience, I've never had any great desire to bring Lucas out during the winter and skate since I would probably fall more often than him. That said, Marilu has no similar excuses so feel free to bug her about his lack of frozen pond activity. :)
Now that Lucas wants to play hockey, this lack of skating experience has become a hindrance. Starting next weekend, he is due to spend the next two weekends in "sort outs," which allow the coaches to sort the kids by their experience level. Since we didn't want to send him into that with absolutely no skating experience, we signed him up for this camp. It's supposed to teach both hockey and skating skills so we hoped to kill two birds with one stone.
That said, yesterday was a bit trying as a parent. It was obvious most of the other kids had a decent amount of skating experience (and hockey, for that matter) so Lucas really stood out, shuffling along the ice as others glided quickly by him. For the first half hour, it seemed like Lucas spent more time falling to the ice than standing on it. He didn't have much experience standing up so we watched as he would struggle for 30-45 seconds, attempting to get up, only to fall to the ice once again. One of the instructors finally gave him some tips, and that seemed to help. He still fell a lot, but he was getting better. We were really worried that he was going to be frustrated at the end of the hour, but when he got off the ice, he had a huge smile and said that he had a lot of fun. So our worry was much ado about nothing, it seems.
Today, he briefly had problems getting up at the beginning of class, but the instructor came by and showed him once again how to stand, and he got the hang of it fairly quickly. By the end of the class, he looked way better than he did yesterday. Sure, he's got a long way to go, but he's definitely making progress and is enthused about it so I think he's going to be all right.
Here's a video from the latter half of yesterday's class. The kids got a chance to have a scrimmage of sorts.
1 comment:
Only thing that matters is that Lucas is enjoying himself. Being one of the weakest skaters is not a bad thing. He has no where to go but up from there. Just don't put pressure on him and let him have fun. He's too young to have to take "his skating" seriously. Parents all think they have the next Gretzky and consequently the kids have too much pressure when they are at an age that they should have "too much fun". Loved the video!
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