Pierre Tournament

The boards came up to our players' chests (on the rights) and as you can see they're up to the opposing team's waist. I think there's something lacking in the Brookings water!!

Ryan giving a teammate some love after scoring a goal

Alex (#4) getting after the puck

Alex on defense



Al 'angling' an opponent
(my understanding of angling is that it's this age groups version of checking, but you don't actually hit the player against the boards)

...and he's successful in getting the puck away from this Pierre Capital

Alex

the temp inside the arena

(ok, I think it was actually the temp outside, but we didn't have any heat in the rink so I'm thinking we were fairly close to this number)

A salute to Tyler Wilcox, a former Pierre player diagnosed with osteosarcoma in 2002. He passed away in 2005 and this weekend's annual tournament is organized by his family to honor his memory.

Squirt C team (Ry's team)

Squirt B team (Al's team)

This weekend we traveled to Pierre for tournaments for both boys (seven games in all). Their respective teams came away with the trophies and each one is undefeated. Alex and Ryan played really well and as you can imagine they're pretty tired (and so are we!). When we got up this morning I couldn't remember which child was playing the early game or what teams they had already played/were going to play today. Alex seems to thrive at defense and Ryan at offense. Since they are polar opposites with everything else, I guess this shouldn't come as a surprise. :) One of the main things we noticed this weekend was how little our Brookings teams are...the Pierre coach even commented on our size. After we beat them he commented on how fast they are. I guess you've got to make up for that somehow.

The boys will finish up their school on Friday at noon and we are leaving for Havre on the 22nd. I need to finish my Christmas shopping and was even thinking today that it would be nice if I had a personal shopper to do that for me. That way I could just give a thumbs up or down and not have to fight the crowds...haha.