SOCCER
Playing for Team CXS in Kirkland Lake
U12 Division in the Kirkland Lake Soccer Association
I play Soccer in the Summer time. It's usually over by the beginning of August so it rarely interfers with my hockey camps. Soccer up north is rather laid back, most of it is just house league and there is little competition. Timmins has a travel team and I've been asked to join but they can never tell us ahead of time when or where the games will be and it seems it doesn't start until August when the house leage is over. As least 2 full weeks in August are for Hockey training, camps and pre tryout skates for the league. Some of these are planned and paid for more than 6 months in advance, Soccer is fun but I like hockey more.
This season I'm playing in Kirkland Lake because the past 2 years in Timmins were canceled and having a season this year wasn't looking promissing, they weren't opening registration and had ignored almost 2 months of emails asking about the posibilities of actually playing this year. In the end we chose to play in Kirkland Lake since it was closer to mom's work and they had already opened their registration and commited to having a season if the government allowed it. There are 4 teams in my division, all from Kirkland Lake, it's definately not Rep Soccer but it's still fun.
One week in the summer is devoted to Soccer camp. I spend about 7 hours a day all week training with coaches they bring in mostly from Europe, they are very good and we all learn a lot. The local teams are mostly just coached by parrents and it's a crap shoot if any of them have ever played themselves, as in played when they were kids, not played at a professional level. Most normal nights at soccer consist of maybe one 5 minutes drill and then directly into a game, so there isn't much of a practice anyway going on from week to week. So the Soccer camp is very important if you want to learn anyhting at all.
Why soccer? It keeps me in shape in the off season and works different muscles... this allows any hockey related stresses and strains time to heal and keep the chances of repititive injuries at a minimum. Performing the same moves night after night in hockey is hard on your system and many Hockey Goalies don't last past 20 years old without developing issues, bad knees are common but I do what I can to minimize the chance of things going bad... Stretching is a big part of that but so is time off hockey in the summer.
2022 might not be where I reach the pinticle of the soccer world or win a World Cup but I can at least get out, have some fun and play with my friends... OK, just because they play for the other team in hockey, it doesn't mean they can't be my friends in the summer time. LOL... I wonder how long it will take them before they realize that I'm GoaliePow, the one that crushes their dreams of scoring all winter long... maybe I will keep that to myself. LOL