A Day Out with the Boys

Since the Hurricanes are not playing because of the NHL lockout, it is hard to watch hockey here in North Carolina! We don't even get much of the college games on TV since we don't have those channels.

The sportsplex in Hillsborough, where Cooper started and Jordan now is starting skating, was having a college hockey tournament. It is NOT like watching Gophers vs North Dakota and those kind of teams but the boys don't know any different. That is the one thing I miss being able to watch or attend is the Gopher hockey games.

We got there and NC State was playing Eastern Kentucky. Who knew NC State even had a hockey team. They were having so much fun. It was kind of a boring game as it was slow and not much action packed hits...I think the final score was 16-7. Then Gettysburg College played Elon. Now that was a fun game. I figured it would be a little bit better of a game since that college is in the Northeast. They had some better skaters. The boys were the only kids at the rink and actually we were almost the only fans there until later in the game. Elon is close by in Burlington, NC. The boys could stand by the glass and get close, an experience they can't have really anywhere else. I wish I would have brought the camera as they were all standing there with hands on each other's shoulders. It was so dang cute! They were loving all the action and hard hits at one point Cooper pulled Braedyn from the glass and said don't stand so close the glass will bend and hit you in the face. The team from Pennsylvania was really rough!  We left after the first period of that game because they were getting tired. They wanted to watch UNC but they weren't until later that night. We went and got ice cream and played at the park.

Also hockey is a small world. I got to talking to one of the fans sitting next to me and I figured it was a dad of one of the kids out there. His kid played for Gettysburg College. He flew in for the game from Chicago but he grew up in Minnesota too. He was from South Minneapolis and went to Benilde. So it was nice chatting with him. He said  to enjoy about the next 12 years of hockey because once it is in the kid's blood it's hard to settle. He also said he had three boys playing hockey all over the states and he spent a lot of time on the road but to enjoy it because it goes by too fast!

We had a wonderful afternoon together. I just loved the looks on their faces while they were watching the game and they were so into it. I can't imagine if we went to a Gopher game or even a Hurricanes game.