I successfully completed my very first year as a Hockey Mom!

And the crowd goes wild…

Ever since our first son was little, he has been a natural with a hockey stick—a golf club, a baseball bat and football too for that matter. He succeeded at whatever his tiny little hands touched.

We avoided putting him into hockey for the first ten years of his life for the sole reason that hockey games, for the most part, are played on Sunday mornings. Being the minister's family, that morning is busy enough as it is.

This past year we bit the bullet. Dove right in—splurged on hockey equipment and power-skating lessons and put him into a Saturday Major Pee-Wee house league.

For a kid who had never played ice hockey a day in his life prior to this, he did phenomenally well! I'm not just saying that because I'm his mother. I remember the expression on his face when he saw me in the stands for the first time. A little grin and slight blush was visible from across the rink.

I am very grateful that I didn't have to worry about his grades dipping either; he just made the Honour Roll. In fact, I'm pretty sure the increased exercise probably helped him.

His involvement in hockey gave us plenty of opportunities to teach him about life. The car rides home from the rink were sometimes filled with joy and sometimes filled with tears. As a hockey mom, it's a whole lot of fun watching them win a game but after a few losses in a row I'm not sure if the ride was tougher on him or on me.

This season we were able to teach him how we should handle losing at anything in life. Losing a game or even several games does not define us as a loser. He learned how to control only the things he could control, like his attitude on the ice, to be a leader and a voice of encouragement and to build up his teammates in difficult moments.

Occasionally we had to remind him to be humble when he played his friends' teams and they wanted to rub in their win. The greatest lesson in those long car rides home…win or lose, we should always give it our very best!

There is never really an “off-season” for us, just a change of scenery!