Pond Hockey at Glenview

I wasn't too sure of the rules, the talent level, or anything else with this group. I knew of only one other player from the Piranhas going into this skate.  Studio ice though has a tendency to allow weaker players to contribute, and still be a part of the game.

However, I felt that I was not on the bottom in terms of talent. It felt really balanced except for about 3 guys. And as a result the teams were really balanced. We had 9 guys on studio ice to make 3 teams of 3. If your team gets scored on, you sit out. So if your team keeps scoring, you can e on the ice for a while. At one point the two other teams were on the ice together for a few minutes, while our team rested up. Then our team stayed out there for a while because the other teams were exhausted.

There was one guy who was really talented. He skated extremely well, and handled the puck very well too. I liked playing against him because he would give you a chance. He wouldn't give you the puck, but he would give you opportunities to tie up his stick, or knock the puck away. He did a lot of tight turns for me because he saw I was weak in them. By the end of the night, I felt fairly confident on my skates playing with him. When he wanted to score, he'd just cut through the middle and get his shot.

I worked on my skating a bit tonight, and I also focused on making good passes to team mates. On studio ice, you can't work too much on positioning because it is so drastically different. But passing and stickhandeling are a must for this type of skate.

I had an absolute blast and want to keep skating with this group every chance I get.

How I Started

Christmas 2000 – My brother in law got me one of the best Christmas gifts I ever recieved. He got me my first hockey stick and goal. It wasn’t anything special, just one of those PVC pipes and a cheap stick with a few pucks. It was great. I remember bringing it to his house, which was on a channel. At that time, it was frozen over, so we were able to go out there and play. We shoveled the ice and made tiny boards with the snow shovel. We put the net out there and just played in our shoes, since neither of us had skates and it was so small. It was a blast.

More people wanted to come and play, so we made the rink bigger. We got a second goal, and set them at opposite ends of the shoveled surface, just like a real rink. It was quite fun. We also put a thin layer of water on the rough ice every night so it’d be smooth. Wow did I fall a lot! I found a relative’s old pair of skates that I tried out when no one was around or wanted to play. It Skating wasn’t too difficult for me considering I inline skated a lot. It only took me a couple of minutes to learn to move and turn.