Provincials

This past weekend was our provincial hockey game. At first, I was admittedly thinking..."oh no....not more hockey", but in all honesty, I'm glad we went. The teams we played were quite well matched, and the games were played well. Jake had a bit of a rough first game, was much better the second game, and was really good the third game. I don't think the coach and I saw it the same, as he sat Jake for most of the second period due to 4 penalties. But when the games are emotional, Jake plays with grit and determination. Unfortunately, the ref and him aren't didn't become besties, but boy was he playing his heart out, and not going to take no for an answer!! In my opinion (and the majority of parents watching), the ref didn't like the elbow Jake (# 12) gave here,



or the hit that became a roughing penalty. So he thought he would also give him a tripping penalty and a high stick penalty. The last two were just plain old bad calls, but when you have a target on your back, and the reffing officails are there grading the refs, sometimes it happens.

The very coolest part of the entire hockey year was the last 20 seconds of the 3rd game of provincials. We had to tie or win that third game to have a chance of making it to the semi-finals. We were down 5-4, and Jake goes down on a break-a-way and a kid from Fort McMurray hauls him down, and the ref calls a penalty shot! With 20 seconds left in the 3rd period! OH MY GOSH!!! Now if you've ever been to a game where a penalty shot is called, you will know how exciting this is....if you haven't...trust me, it's very exciting!!

I can't even begin to imagine the pressure on him, and after, (I asked him and he said at first his legs were shaking, but he managed to get ahold of himself before the ref blew the whistle...) I grabbed the camera and ran to the other end of the rink so I could video....

here it is (I had to video through the netting, it's not very clear, if you hit the little arrows in the bottom right corner, it will at least go full screen for you)


How. Cool. Was. That?? Seriously Cool.

I cried.

Then I tried to stop crying.

And I cried more...

As it turned out, we needed Okotoks to lose their game, and us tie or win ours to make semi's. Okotoks won. We were done. But I don't care :) That was awesome!

From here on in. Jake plays hit hockey. Looking forward to it!!

Love,
Jodi