Goalies and Gratitude

This is the first of the quiet weekends.

We've just finished 6 months of 6am Saturday practies and 1 or 2 games a weekend. The goalie gear has been dried cleaned and put away. I don't know if he'll be playing nets again next year. After the teams were picked, the shortage of players in our age group was apparant. We had 12 players and no goalie. There were only 2 goalies between the 4 teams. After some discussion about what we might do, my sweet boy told his dad "Tell Coach Mike I'll play in nets. I'll do that for our team."

My heart melted and at the same time I began to fill with anxiety. You see, my boy started novice as a forward, moved into goalie his second year and fell in love with it. But throughout the second half of his second season in nets, he took every loss personally. If a goal got passed him, his confidence would take a dip. At the end of that year he announced to his coach, in front of his whole team no less, that he wasn't sure he wanted to play hockey again. He most definietly wasn't going to get between the pipes.

Last year was a rebuilding year. Gordon and I did a great deal of minset work with our boy. We built his confidence back up. I found it was easier to watch the games with my boy on defense instead on in the net. It was not nearly as stressful! Being a Goalie Mom is not for the faint of heart! By the end of the season he was loving hockey again and there was not one mention, request or longing to return to the lonely end of the rink.

So you can understand why his eagerness to step up for the team caught me off guard and made my inner mama bear nervous. We had some good chats and he insisted. So I spoke with teh coach. I made it very clear that I would pull him from nets if we thought his self esteem was being negatively impacted and our awesome coach agreed and we came up with a plan to support our goalie.

We started the year strong, but struggled the second half. We had a string of loses, and while Ozzy would get emotional or be disappointed with the loss, he continued to show up strong and confident for his team. Coach counted on him as a leader and he even awarded Ozzy the honour of Assistant
Captain.

It has been an outstanding year in so many respects. Our little team with 12 players earned a spot in the Top division, we beat our two riva teams when it really mattered and earned ourselves a spot in teh semi-finals. That last game was one of their very best of the season! The other team scored one goal, and only because the puck bounced off of his stick and squeeked in over his shoulder. There was no way he could stop it. Our boys fired shot after shot but the other team's goalie was as hot as Oz and we werent able to tie it up.

Which brings us back to this quiet weekend. 

It's still busy, as the team manager I have financial reports to get done, the team party to organize and team gifts to make. One thing I am doing first though is taking a few minutes to say thank you to all the people who helped us have an incredible year. I truly believe that being grateful and expression my appreciation for others is very important. I'm no Emily Post but if someone has gone out of their way to help others, I think that should be recognized. There are so many volunteers behind the scenes that help the players, coaches, managers, families and the community.  Plus I have to say my #hockeymomtribe was the best. At the very least they deserve to be recognized for their contribution. It feels good to fill other people's cup.

As much as I love handwritten thank you notes, I am really struggling with time and I didn't have everyone's mailing address. I don't have any cute papercards on hand and my budget is a little tight so buying the really nice ones wouldn't be a splurge I could do this week. An email seemed plain and too work like. I had an account at www.paperlesspost.com and had recieved some credits to try out the site. I scrolled through until I found just the right designs for each of my notes!  I turned a Christmas card into a perfect Hockey Mom thank you and found a cute New Yorker design for a fun note to a friend. 

Paperlesspost app

I love that I can send a thank you card but save paper and postage! When it comes to mailing things I'm not always on top of that (I have been know to send a birthday card a few weeks late, not on purpose just because getting to the post office to get stamps is not something i think to do) so I KNOW I got my thank yous out much quicker than I would have if I hand wrote them and the cost of each card was less than a paper card as well. The site also has some free designs that are really cute. I will definitely be topping up my account when my credits run out.

I guess I'll finish these thank yous much faster than I thought and can move on to some other to dos that I haven't gotten to in the past 6 months, like cleaning my house lol.