TEAM USA 2006 WOMEN'S OLYMPIC HOCKEY VISIT

Per the title of today's post, the 2006 Team USA Women's Olympic hockey team came to visit Thief River Falls last night. They were in town to scrimmage with the Prowler boys of Lincoln High at Ralph Engelstad Arena. They boys and I headed out earlier in the afternoon to the outdoor community skating rink at the corner of 10th and Labree Avenue to break in our new hockey skates. I lifted Danny over the boards onto the ice and he held on to the boards for dear life once inside. Quite an alien experience for him to say the least. I walked him around the rink with my regular boots on so I could better keep both of us upright. He did great, but called it quits a short time later as he was having a bit of difficulty standing up. I skated around the rink for the first time in over two decades (I never knew they made Cougar hockey skates, but they work great). I managed to finish about a half hour of skating without falling once.

We headed to the rink at 6:45 p.m. with the boys' friend, Tyler Widerski, and took in the scrimmage with Team USA. We got nice seats down at the Team USA goal right up at the plexi-glass, so we had pucks hitting only inches from in front of us and players slamming into the boards, so we really felt a part of the night's action. Joe Drevlow showed up a short time later with Brielle, Braeden, Brock, Brett, Brianna, Brigham, and I think one other girl to make a full house. At the break, Joe went to the concession stand and came back with a large cardboard box loaded with boxes of popcorn and pop for all of us. We all had a great time watching the action and I think the score was pretty close, though they didn't officially keep score on the scoreboard. It looked like the Prowlers enjoyed talking to the Team USA members at slow points in the game. Team USA is made up of about 10 Ivy League players coming from Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, and Brown with the majority of the remaining teammates from the U of Minnesota, one from U of Wisconsin, and one from the U of New Hampshire. There's one from Seattle and I think she attends the U of Minnesota.

The team visited Challenger Elementary yesterday afternoon before the scrimmage and signed a couple of autographs on Aaron's Prowler Pride t-shirt that all third graders get. After the scrimmage, Joe and his kids and Aaron and I headed down to the basement of the arena where the locker rooms are and waited outside the Team USA locker room with just a handful of other kids and parents and waited for players to come out and quite a few signed the kids' t-shirts, arms, programs, etc. with Sharpies and I got Aaron's picture with a few of them as well (posted above). Little did I know that moving to Thief River would afford the boys an opportunity to meet Olympic athletes. Aaron was positively beaming from ear to ear. I also got some good video footage of the team. They are scheduled to play in Torino, Italy next month, so it was nice of them to take the time to come all the way up here and visit with the kids.

Today, we decided to further break in the skates. We headed over to Huck Olson Memorial Arena for open public skating. Aaron put his skates on this time and both he and Daniel had the assistance of some walkers specifically designed for skating. Aaron said he wanted to "learn the hard way," i.e. fall down without any help, but I encouraged him to try the walker at first. He quickly found how valuable it could be. I think he made it about 20 minutes out there and fell a few times, but never hurt himself. Danny also fell a few times, but amazingly was able to pull himself up with the ice walker with no assistance and go on his way again. After open skating was closed about an hour later, Danny said, "Can we go to that outside rink again? I like skating, Dad. It's fun!" So, off we went to the rink at 10th and Labree. This time around, though, Danny walked from the car to the rink on his own with his skates on, climbed over the boards, again on his own, and proceded to walk around the rink, all on his own. He did kind of a babystep walk, but was amazingly steady and fell fewer times than when he used the walker at the Huck. He cried a few times and said he didn't want to skate again, but later tonight was asking me if we could "skate every day from now on." We ended today's activities with a trip to the Galaxy Twin to see the movie "Cheaper by the Dozen 2" and are having a relaxing evening at home now watching Ernest Goes to Camp. I think we spent a good three hours on skates this afternoon and we'll probably go skating again tomorrow at the Ralph, so we'll be able to say we skated on the same ice as Team USA. Talk about a fun weekend!