Due to the long-overdue renovation at Lake Belmont, there were very few ice slots for NCWHL this month. Fortunately, Ice Oasis has Saturday nights available, so a whole big bunch of awesome hockey women — and a few husbands — descended upon Redwood City for a mixed-level pick-up game last night.
HOLY SHIT FUN.
It was truly mixed-level: there were skaters there from every NCWHL division. We played "real" pick-up style, where people changed shifts whenever they wanted to and the next person would go out for whatever position they had. So we had Green (beginner) skaters on the same line as Blue (advanced) skaters, mixed with Red and Maroon (intermediate and advanced-intermediate). Awesome.
It was a much faster-paced game then our Red games normally are, of course, but it was accessible for me. There were 14 players per team, so there was a lot of bench time to recover from hard skating. I felt like I was working hard without being so winded that I couldn't make it to the bench.
I saw everyone (even Green skaters) make really awesome plays and everyone (even Blue skaters) totally wiff. I personally had shifts where I had great positioning and got awesome passes….and then one shift in particular where I kept checking my stick to find the puck-shaped hole in the blade. 😉
There was no ref and no scorekeeper, so no one "won" or "lost". I scored two goals, though one of them the goalie technically kicked in accidentally. 😉
Anyway, it was awesome to see a bunch of my Red friends, meet some Green players that'll likely be in Red soon, and hang out with the more advanced skaters that I don't see that often. I hadn't skated with Felicia or Shawna since my last season at Ice Oasis a year ago.
Hopefully there'll be more of these informal pick-ups. Well worth the $10. 😉
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