Friday and a quiet night at the pool, lots of players still fighting the flu - 5 or 6 at least. Plus, Domoney boys are away in Florida playing with some US teams in a big international event. Carson was missed by the younger goalies who are used to following his lead. However, Claire did take Sam under her wing and was very focussed on the technical side of their work. It was nice to see that a 12 year old girl can so easily shift from follower in a group to leader when it is needed.

I had an interesting observation from a parent tonight after taking her Atom child to the first UofM practice this week. The amount of technical work being done left a positive impression. This is very good for me to hear as we had a coaches meeting last week to specifically talk about the missing or deficient skills from that age. Seems that the structure and reinforcement that I was after has been embraced. It will be good to get the coaches feedback tomorrow after a week of refocussed effort.

The push toward the March Alberta Open is getting all the young players very excited with training and team activities. This is the most exciting month of the season for both 12&u and 14&u squads. Saturday the Bantam girls are going to learn a drop defense to isolate a shooter and eliminate a strong centre. This is something we discourage most of the year as we stress 1 on 1 skills until Cadet. However, in Alberta they will likely meet some teams with a freakishly big girl at 2m who can't be stopped without a drop. Plus, the Bantam boys will draw some drop defense when teams see Dylan so they have to learn to work around that and rehearsing it with the girls is a good start.