Quote:
Originally Posted by the-rasta-masta
I have a 5 year old son, and while I have suggested getting him started in skating lessons for the last few years, a few trips with some skates to the outdoor rink over the last few winters hadn't resulted in much desire from him so we've been focusing on swimming and golf instead.
All of a sudden he has taken some interest in the game while playing street hockey with his cousins this summer, and I'm curious if there are any recommendations on the best way to introduce him to the game. His cousins live in Cochrane and they took some skating lessons where they wore full hockey equipment, and I've thought that made a lot of sense and have been looking for something similar in Calgary.
Any recommendations on best approaches would be helpful since I figure he needs to get comfortable on skates before signing up for Timbits or anything like that?
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My son was your kid's age when we did an "Intro to Hockey" program at South Fish Creek. It was full equipment, once a week on Saturday mornings. Pretty sure other rinks, YMCA, City of Calgary run similar programs.
It was not "real" hockey, but who cares at that age. They still did drills, scrimmages with the group, etc.
The best part was the initial commitment was only 6 or 7 weeks and they ran consecutive sessions through the winter. So, you could enroll in one, then see how it went, then enroll into the next one, etc. We ended up doing that one whole winter until Covid happened.
I feel like that was a really good move before we enrolled him the next year into Timbits, but that was just personal family preference.
I coached Timbits and U9 the last few years and there certainly are kids who are taking the price tags off their gear and just learning to skate at the first practice, so dont be discouraged if you just sign him up cold turkey.
My main comment is to follow your kids lead and dont get caught up in all the hubbub which you will likely experience. Its crazy what the "elite" families are into, but hey, thats their life.
They will all end up playing at 10:30pm in Chestermere and have parking lot beers together afterwards anyways.