Update: September 8

It was a relatively quiet night, as reflected by the "early" blog post. Recall last year I was up most night's until way past midnight. It is much easier the second time through this sort out process as a second year convenor.

We have six hours of skills sessions coming up, three tomorrow and three on Saturday. This year has been a schedule challenge. We have a full registration of players and I have to squeeze 35 players on the ice for each of the skills hours. This meant zero flexibility for requests to switch spots.

I have had a huge number of people read the Sort Out Player Skills Evaluation Plan for tomorrow, 233 page views so far to be exact. Given we have 210 players to evaluate, I am confident a number of the players will know what to do. This will help the evaluators greatly.

This year we made changes to the evaluation plan and added a passing station. We will change the drill from the yo-yo pass to pairs passing around a circle. This way two players are passing in motion. We are also going to ditch the backwards skating passing. Sorry for not putting that in the plan but I did call it a draft so we could change our minds. Cam and myself will demonstrate at the station tomorrow anyway.

I still have some competitive players in tryouts who will be coming down to house tomorrow and maybe even Friday night. If they are reading, they are on the ice Saturday at 12:00PM for their skills session. I was somewhat evil and put all the players coming down from the tryouts in the 6:15AM game on Sunday.

Not much else to add except for the question of the day:

Question: When are the body checking clinics?

Answer: The two clinics are Thursday September 15 at 6:00PM and 7:00PM at Sensplex Scotia. We will be inviting those players who had strong marks after the first two evaluation sessions. Players will be further assessed on their willingness to engage in the physical part of the game. Game four will have body checking for the stronger players.

The body checking clinic is mandatory for those players who wish to play at the peewee A level. If you have taken the clinic before, you do not need to take it a second time.

To be clear in advance, attending a body checking clinic does not mean you will play peewee A. It just means you have completed the mandatory player clinic to be allowed to play in peewee A.