Friday Night in Québec & the Pre-Game Wisdom of J. Woodson

Our bus has arrived at L'Arpidrome for tonight's game. Henry had a great afternoon of souvenir shopping and resting -- he took a 60-minute before we left on the bus. I learned today from some of the other parents, and I confirmed with Henry, that Henry is providing the pre-game pep talks to the team! And apparently he's been doing so for the last several weeks. As part of their pregame ritual, the kids get dressed, the coaches have their say, and then they both turn the floor over to Henry before they both leave the room ("OK Henry, the floor is all yours.") Henry then has 10 minutes to give the team a speech before the game. Apparently, he adopts a persona (Jemica Woodson (Sp?)), and chooses a word/acronym of the day, and then expounds on that for that night's game. For example, earlier this week, he rifted on the word "WOW" ("Work On Working!", "Work On Winning!", "Work On WOWING!"). Henry told me that he tries to keep it light and humorous, and that he gets everyone's attention and keeps it for the whole talk. During the game, whenever anyone sees a play that merits the "word of the game" the player shouts it out: "That was a WOW!" Who knew? All I can say is "U-N-B-E-L-I-E-V-E-A-B-L-E !

Henry is in a very good place for tonight's game (see the photo below, snapped moments before we boarded the bus). As we left the room tonight, he said to me that he would make me proud with his play tonight. I hugged him and told him that he had already made me so proud with all that he and his team had accomplished... It doesn't get better than this: to be here with your boy, a Friday night hockey game in Quebec City, with everything on the line. I told him that he worked hard for the last 6 years to get to this point, and that this would be the first of many important games to come in his career.

The bus ride over to the rink tonight was full of good, fun energy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfRwy2dr64c

Speaking of unbelievable, this morning at the Colisée we watched a game between a team from Vancouver, British Columbia, and a team from Sudbury, Ontario. On the Ontario team, the "Nickel Barons", there was a defenseman who had to be at least 6' 6" tall. Not only did he tower over the other players, he was taller than the refs!! How tall is he going to be when he turns 14?

25 Minutes to Game Time...