End of Season

We had one last hurrah this season -- in Anaheim! This was with the competition state team, not our local recreational team.

I told my new job that my condition of being hired was to have Memorial Day weekend off for this tournament (plus other things -- and they still hired me??? ...amazing...). I emailed the family in Anaheim and let them know the schedule.

My brother Steve and Mom were there for all of Derek's games! Everyone else went to the river for the holiday weekend. Steve had to stay because of not only the work he had to do for the year-end school year (he's a teacher), but because of Christopher's (his youngest son) hockey games. So we spent the weekend going between Derek's games and Christopher's games! Cool! What a weekend for us hockey fanatics!

Now, you have to realize that our team was lucky to go. We had exactly two lines, as the other kids couldn't go (we usually have three lines). Which meant tons of ice time for the kids that did go. Derek got a hat trick in the first game, a play maker in the second game, and FIVE goals and two assists in the third game! Awesome! We won all our games and went on to the Championship game.

The Championship game was against a Canadian team. They scored first, but we came back and tied them. They were a REALLY tough team, and we weren't playing as well for this game as we did for the previous games. So our kids really struggled. The game ended in a tie, so we had to go into "sudden death" over time.

What's really sad, is the other team got a goal in first, but it was disqualified because it was kicked in (a no-no). Their team thought they had won and was already throwing their helmets and gloves into the air when the ref said "no goal". So the puck was dropped again, and within seconds, one of our kids took the puck down the ice and scored! ...making US the winners!

Each of our kids got a trophy cup -- METAL (amazing it wasn't plastic!), and our team got that huge banner in the picture to hang. 'Course, don't know where we'll hang it as we don't have our own rink we practice on. Our kids are from all over the state, and we practice on any rink in the state that we can get ice.

But what a way to end the season! Champions!!