The coach's Take: w/ Coach Jack & Joey

Coach Jack's Take - Lesson one was how to fall. Lesson two was how to get back up. The Junior Banners learned quickly and the coaches learned just as quickly that this is a strong, resilient, and fast-learning group of kids. ‘MooMoo' led the team in falls and was second on the team in smiles behind Miles, who you may remember as the boy who who angrily struggled to cope with one of his classmates passing away. Falling and getting back up are important lessons on ice AND in life. Just as important as lessons one and two, I saw a lot of kids fall in love with skating on Sunday. They talked to each other about the feeling of gliding as if it were magic. In a short hour, their objective wasn't to maintain balance but, racing, gliding, turning, and sliding. It was a thrill. They felt it and fell in love with it, just the same way many of us did.

*pictured below helping one of our Banners skate*

Coach Joey's Take – For the older Junior Banners, we focused on stopping and starting. We practiced snow-plow and hockey specific stops. Laemal and ‘Shakes’ worked tirelessly to perfect their stops. While we worked with Peanut, Savage, Laemal, Josh, Shakes, Toine Jr., and Miles on stopping and edge-work. Practice doesn’t make perfect, but rather perfect practice makes perfect. Each were able to focus on quick starts and stops which led us to our next skill: crossovers. With this more experienced group, we utilized forward crossovers using the circles. Each player demonstrated their understanding of crossovers and even increased speed by the end of our 15 minutes. Backwards skating will be the focus for the next skate.

*pictured below with a smile*

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