Less hockey, more fighting

We went to the U of I hockey game Friday night. It was TB's first hockey game and he thought it was pretty awesome. I used to go to the games when I was in high school and always enjoyed them.

Hockey is not the place to learn sportsmanship though. Whenever the U of I scores, the students yell at the goalie "It's all your fault" repeatedly. Then they play a song and the students interject lyrics like "Hey! You suck!". When the other team scores, they yell "you still suck!" I've also heard the chant of "less hockey, more fighting", which pretty much sums up why I go to hockey games. Friday night, they would boo the other team whenever they came on or off the ice and then they were even booing the poor Zamboni driver when she missed a little spot. Strangely enough, the thing they didn't boo was the syncronized skating girls that fell. The first one that went down got up and looked like she was crying. The second one laughed. I told Looseyfur that the first one felt like an ass because she fell, the second didn't feel as bad because she was just part of trend LOL

The rest of our group trickled out over the course of the game. We stuck it out to the bitter end. TB had been wanting to go down and stand by the glass so we did that at the last 3 minutes. We were standing there and they slammed the puck towards the goal and missed. It smashed into the glass about 8 feet to my right and I thought TB was going to pee in his pants. He ducked down and threw his arms up over his head. I was LMAO at the poor thing :)

Now, I've planned a mom's night out for the weekend before my birthday to go to a hockey game. I fully intend to sit with the students and taunt at full volume. Who is coming with me :)

Puck you

When we were on vacation, The Boy saw a commercial on TV for Evansville youth hockey and he said "Mom, I HAVE to go do that", despite the fact that he has never been on ice skates in his entire life We explained to him that that was for people that lived there, since it was an ongoing thing. He wasn't pleased but accepted it when I told him that we have a youth hockey program here and that I would check it out when we got home. I thought no more about it and assumed it was a passing thing.

Then on Saturday, I happened to see one of those "Coffee News" papers that a lot of businesses have and on the front page it said "youth hockey sign ups, Monday August 11" That sort of seemed like fate so I picked it up and decided to see about signing him up. I called the number listed several times, trying to get information before I made any type of commitment. Once no one answered once I got the son of the person and the rest of the times I got voicemail but no answers.


We decided to go over last night and check it out. I kept telling TB that I would sign him up, if I could. I had no idea of ages, cost, commitment, etc so I wasn't promising anything.

We talked to the guy, who told me it is for ages 3-high school. So far so good. Then he told me that the time commitment for the non-travelling team was practice one evening a week and a game on Saturday morning. Again, not bad. Then he showed me the fee schedule. It was $225 to sign up for the non-travelling team. If you advance to travelling, it is $925 and high school is $1025!!!! Plus, you have to buy the gear and sign up with the governing body to the tune of another $50.

I said nevermind, thanks anyway. That is entirely too much money to commit to something that he may not even like (if it were roller hoceky, I'd sign him up since he skates well). If he had been doing it and enjoyed, I would feel differently but other than taking him ice skating (I can't ice skate, it hurts my ankles too much) they won't even put him on the ice to see if he is skilled enough to actually participate. He would be in a league with kids that have been doing this since they were 3. Not only would I be paying an outrageous amount of money, there is so guarentee that for that money, he would ever actually play.

He was disappointed but when I explained to him why he I wouldn't sign up, he it well. I was really impressed with how well he handled it because usually that would have caused a meltdown.