Halloween is here and the weather is rainy and windy. The witch of November waits in the wings, as do the snows of old man winter. The rain is expected to stop just in time for trick or treaters to make their way out into the early evening darkness. Our home rink opens today and practice is early in the afternoon. The last few practices have been small as the swine flu and high school conditioning tryouts combine to reduce the numbers of bantams and midgets who can make it to the rink at night. The flu is widespread in this part of the country and is impacting schools and businesses throughout the area. I’ve backed off on any hard conditioning skating drills in favor of shooting, puck handling work, and small games, but I have let the small games skating dictate the tone. Most of the players don’t seem to realize how much skating they are actually doing during these controlled games, and that is good. They are still increasing their stamina, but I do not want to wear out any skater that may or may not be coming down with the flu. It does them much more benefit to stay home and rest to get healthy than to try and show up to practice when they are sick. First of all the practices would only work against them, and second – we don’t want to take chances that the flu might spread throughout the whole team. We took advantage of the low numbers to tailor the practices to the players who made it out onto the ice. It has given us a chance to work more one on one with these players. You should always try to make the most out of each practice. Sometimes you will find that a negative situation can be turned into a positive one if you take different approaches to the way you run a practice. You should always tailor your practices to your team, but if you can focus in on each player’s unique abilities you will improve the level of skill of the whole team in the long run.
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