Hockey Tryouts 2.0

Remember last year when Sam had to tryout for hockey for the first time, and I was a mess, but ultimately he made a team and had a great season? Turns out, that crazy mother tryout anxiety doesn't go away just because you're pretty sure your kid is going to make the team. Sam had his tryouts for next season last Sunday. He will always be in the first session of tryouts because of our last name, and I saw more than one parent/child combo from later sessions there early to check out the drills, which is smart but annoying. We were both so much less nervous than last year, though, and I thought he had a pretty good showing at his session. There was a little too much talking on his part, I thought, but he performed the drills well and seemed to be paying attention most of the time. But the week between then and when we got his team placement email was excruciating.

Last year there were six teams, and they were ranked 1 though 6. Sam was on team 4 last year, and his big goal was to move up two spots, even though I bet he would have been happy with moving up one spot. Unfortunately, the organization decided to change things up this year and not tell us until after tryouts. This year they are having one elite team, and then the rest of the teams are sort of evened out, with a mixture of older and younger kids. All of the teams in our region are moving to this sort of system, and while I think it will be good for player development, it would have been nice to know this info ahead of time. The look on Sam's face when I tried to explain that he didn't really move up or down really bummed me out. Plus, he only has one friend from last year on his team, and I think he was really hoping that more of his old team mates would be on his new team. We had a really, really awesome group of kids and parents, and we all kind of wanted to stick together. But since they were all fairly skilled, they had to be split up to keep the teams evened out. BUT! We'll just have to bring that special awesomeness from our last team and spread it around to our new team.

No matter what, I think Sam's final season as a mite is going to be a great one!