Monday, February 15, 2016

Hockey

Clint and Rick were watching TV together last month and they turned on a hockey game.  Clint shouted "I love hockey!!!"  To our knowledge he has never seen hockey, or played hockey before.  We never watch hockey, we know nothing about hockey, and none of us have ever even been ice skating, save for one time when Katie was super tiny.  But Clint from that moment on began using his light saber as a hockey stick and a ball for a puck.  He seems to know more about it than we thought. So I called the ice arena at the rec center and they just happened to have free hockey lessons on Friday nights until the end of the month.  They also were in sign ups for ice skating lessons which I figured might help him play hockey.  Our friend Mark loaned Clint all the gear he would need to get started, and off we went.
Clint spent the first lesson mostly on his butt.  He was incredibly discouraged that he couldn't skate like the other kids.  But his coach stood him up, put a puck in front of his stick and Clint whacked it.  Of course he fell right after the hit.  But the drive to keep going is in him.  The next week he started ice skating lessons, and of course still kept falling.  Again he was a bit discouraged, but he kept at it.  Last night he had his second hockey lesson and lo and behold he didn't fall near as much.  When he did fall he was able to get himself back up, and moving again.
Rick and I are in awe that he could find a sport at age 5 that didn't come at anyone's recommendation, and that he seems to love it as much as he does.  He plays for an hour and come out smelling (and these are his words) like and old dead crocodile.  What a boy!