First hockey skills class!

After a few weeks of skating class and public skating, I decided I wasn’t sore enough and should thus attend my first hockey skills class.

Peter had assured me that the class was appropriate for a neophyte, but I’m not convinced that that was the case. 😉 I’m still glad that I went, but I don’t know if I’d recommend it to anyone without my ability to push pride aside and be an utter fool.

The class started with all 15 or so of us lined up along the goal line. We did various types of skating across to the far goal line; I did well when it was, like, “skate in a straight line and don’t die”, but when it came to things like backwards skating, I was at least 30 seconds slower than anyone else. The fun result of this was 15 hockey men staring at me as I attempted to reach the goal line. I didn’t care too much — see above, re: no pride — but it was a little intimidating.

One fun drill was to skate forward to the first blue line, put one knee down, then stand back up. No one told me I wasn’t supposed to put any weight on the downed knee, though, resulting in my executing some stellar spinning donuts around the rink. Wheeeeee! Like Disney, but padded.

We all split into two groups then: skating practice and stick handling. After 20 minutes or so, we switched and did the other.

I did really well in both skating and stick handling, considering I haven’t put stick to ice in 8 years. 😉 It was my first time doing backwards C-cuts, so that was pretty exciting…the group continued on to work on backwards crossovers, but I said, “screw that” and just kept working on C-cuts.

I also did pretty well at doing one-foot glides around the circles. Counterclockwise is much easier for me than clockwise (another thing that parallels motorcycling) but I did better than I thought I would at staying on my inside or outside edge.

Stick handling was similarly fun; I did pretty well at keeping my head up while handling the puck to my forehand and backhand sides. When we skated around with the puck, I caught myself looking down too often, but, eh, at least I noticed it. That’s just practice.

Anyway, blah blah blather.

Hockey schedule this week:

Wed 3/15: Skating class
Sat 3/18: Hockey skills
Sun 3/19: Evaluation for NCWHL green team!!! Woot *bounce* !11!1eleventyone!1!

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