Canada Hockey Trip

[monster]

Pictures soon, meanwhile, the story....

so.... Way back at Thanksgiving, Thor's Hockey team got invited to a tournament in Canada.

Thor plays on a house team, it's a small house program (one team) which previously has had only MiniMite (<7yo) and Mite(7&8yo) teams. Plenty of good travel teams for the older kids, but no house teams. There were many Mites ageing up who wanted to stay at house level and stay at Compuware, so they started a Squirt House team (9&10yo). Problem is, the league the mini-mites and mites play in doesn't have a squirt division. So we had to join another league. A much more ferociously competitive league (House no longer means "house", it's just a level). We were playing against teams who practice 3 times a week -we do one practice one game. And all our players were first-year squirts (9yo). So we lost every game. Badly. Even the non-league games the manager set up agaianst teams of equal standing.

So then.... we got invited to a "tournament' in St. Mary's, Ontario, Canada. About three hours driving. They wanted teams with a similar record to their house team i.e. no wins by Thanksgiving. They went through amazing paperwork hoops to ensure that the team could not add ringers or leave dodos at home.