It's Hockey Time Again!

So if you've ever read this blog before then you knew at some point this was coming. Yes Its is once again hockey season in our house. Now in all honesty it's never really not hockey season in our house, but this year we've gone OVERBOARD... That logo above is the team Frudoch has FINALLY made. It took a while to happen and then this year it really appeared it wouldn't as he was not picked. That brings us to.....

Ok it was late and I used a short cut but Fru was supposed to play for the Caps. In fact he did take part in one practice with them and went to a team picnic. Then an interesting thing happened and an opportunity opened up and he stepped up and grabbed it. I feel a bit bad about leaving the Capitals but we did it in June and the season games started in late August so....

Of course there was also the decision whether to play high school hockey or continue in travel and after a summer with the the HS team we know he made the right choice. So for 2012-12 Fru is playing in the Tier 1 Elite League and so far the competition has been intense. Just what he wanted.

Moving on to Poppy things get even more crazy. The theme could be let the politics continue... Girls travel hockey is gaining momentum and some organizations don't know when to stay put and when to step up. Unfortunately ours played their cards all wrong before the tryouts and while they bluffed their hand they ultimately tried to play with a bad hand. Poppy was not invited back to play with the group she played with last year and to make a long story short i'm FINE with it. That group has tried to go from 0 to 60 in an instant and unless you're driving a top fuel dragster its impossible. She was left on the side of the road and is now playing on a U16 team instead of the U12 (which folded) or U14 which had some parents with Olympic dreams. The U16 team is Tier 2 and the U14 is Tier 1 and is made up with girls that should be in tier 2.....

So while happy to be playing Poppy wanted more competition so we went and tried out for a spot on the U12 Ohio Flames (which is Tier1) which added some higher level competition to her schedule. This team is based out of the Cleveland which means 2 hour drives each way for practices and games. Its ok though as these girls are GOOD! So practices and games were intermixed for the flames and practices were happening for the CBJ girls team when Poppy suffered a broken arm at a practice and this cut short the best part of the Ohio Flames season along with a month of practices with the CBJ...

Which now brings us to team #3 for Poppy. She's going back to the boys and playing in CAHA to supplement the travel schedules of the CBJ girls and Flames programs. It will make things busier, but all the games are within an hour of our house and laying all the schedules on top of each other it looks like she will only miss 1 game with the boys team. There will be a few games starting with this weekend where she will play a boys game on the way to a travel girls game though....

Ok so yes we're nuts here, but the boys team and league she is playing in has what they call a select team made up of the better players in the league and they go and play about 15-20 games against travel teams and other select teams. Since we have nothing to do on a few of those weekends..... Yeah she's trying out for the North Stars tonight....Oh brother....