When does it ever end? Yes I'm talking hockey hockey. The kids seasons officially ended with games in March and while part of me was sad to see the end I am pretty darn tired from all the travel. 2 kids playing travel hockey gets tiring pretty quickly. Yet I know I'll look back on this year and love every minute. Between the 2 kids we had more than 100 games and more than 180 practices. The kids played in 26 different ice rinks in 2 states and it would have been 3 states except Frudoch missed a tournament in Pennsylvania and Poppy's team missed one there as well due to a screw up by the team manager. I don't even want to think of how much fuel we went thru for my car and truck. This winter we had our Subaru blow a turbo on the way to an early hockey game in Cleveland which added another $3k to the expenses and then had to sell said car as there was so much metal sucked thru the engine that it would fail. If I had to guess... we spent more than $8k on hotels, food, gas, supplies, doctors appointments, hockey equipment and car repairs. Never mind the time which has even more value. Why do we do it? Hockey is a great sport. Perhaps the greatest. Our vacation this year was staying home and resting after a long season. The best part..... Development camp started last week for both kids. Frudoch as an instructor and Poppy as a student.
Of course the next step is Mid Am development camp tryouts for elite players and for the first time Frudoch is invited. Should be a great measuring stick for him before tryouts for the 2011/12 season which are less than a month away. Poppy will skip girls Mid Am camp and will be looking to play all girls travel next year as no matter what anybody says a girl doesn't get a fair shake on a boys team. Even when she is better than the boys. Oh well it was tons-o-fun and its already going again so I need some sleep.
