A Weekend, Living the Dream
Left for Detroit at 10 a.m. on Thursday. Got home on Sunday at 4 p.m. Ugh.We were at a hotel 30 minutes from the rink (thanks a lot, "stay to play" and assigned hotels). Eli 16.5s team played two games a day.
With all that in mind, this was a typical day:
8:00 wake up
8:45 breakfast
9:30 arrive at rink
11:00 game starts
1:00 game ends
1:30 lunch
2:15 get back to hotel
2:30 nap
3:15 wake up, shower
3:30-4:30 free time
4:45 dinner
5:30 arrive at rink
7:00 game starts
9:00 game ends
10:00 get back to hotel
10:15 shower, watch TV
10:45 lights out
If you add in driving, meals, game prep, game, and returning to the hotel, each game constituted about five and a half hours. Two games a day is eleven hours, and that's if you're very, very efficient.
Eli is very efficient. He set this schedule up, and he's totally disciplined about napping instead of watching TV or checking things on his phone. I think it works to his advantage, because he always gets enough rest at night and between games.
For parents, though, these are long, long days.
They won their first four games, then lost in the semis of the tournament to a Colorado team with lots of Russian kids (who they'd already beaten in pool play 4-1, but that was against the second goalie, and their best goalie played in the semis).
Eli played two games (he was set up to play in the finals, but we lost), went 2-0 with a 0.50 GAA. Didn't have to do much in either game, really.
Oh, and Igor Larianov was at the rink, scouting the Russian kids. That was pretty cool.
I think Eli's team will be 12th or 13th when the rankings come out this week, but they're starting to run out of time to get to 10th and make it to Nationals. They can still do it, but they have to play consistently well for the next 15 games, which has always been a problem for them.
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