Community Sessions

by barbaragarn

One JMS session… five levels of players. Hockey for Everyone!

We’re adding Community Sessions to the JMS offerings to give players a chance to mix with friends at different levels. With these games open to players of any level, the Community Sessions will give all players more opportunities for icetime.

First announced on Twitter (JMS_Hockey) and Facebook (JMS Hockey), the Community Sessions are a more laid-back environment for social hockey. Sometimes, you want to get your exercise in a tough but rewarding run… and sometimes you want to get your exercise walking and chatting with a friend around the lake. Community Sessions are like that: working your body, but not hard, and more about fun than fatburning.

Community Sessions will always have a local watering hole indicated so participants can decamp to drink, talk, network and brag. We want these to be an opportunity to get to know other folks in the JMS community. 

Level distribution will be controlled, so the session won’t have ten L5s and ten Level 1 players; a Community Session may have three roster spots open, but if the Level 5 quota is already reached, then Level 5 players won’t be able to sign up for the skate. We want to keep things balanced.

With a variety of levels, skaters at both ends of the continuum will need to remember to play nice. This means the Level 5 player not going coast to coast incessantly and scoring 17 times, but it also means the Level 1 player should not get huffy and hacky when the puck is stolen off his stick. 

Because this is JMS and we expect participants to remember our motto: Hockey for Everyone. We will be monitoring the sessions and if someone demonstrates he just can’t play with this range of abilities, and remember the point is for everyone to have fun, then we will return him to the parity-only sessions. Skating the Community Sessions is a privilege.

As non-parity sessions, we will not make any parity evaluations at these sessions, nor will we make any level changes as a result of a Community Session. With such a wide spectrum of players, we just can’t make accurate parity assessments, so we’ll exclusively leave those for the parity sessions.

The Community Sessions will start with one at Breck on July 8. In subsequent weeks, there will be Community Sessions at Plymouth, Eden Prairie and Richfield as well. We will start slowly and see how popular these sessions are, and meet demand accordingly.

I hope you are excited! These should be a lot of fun.

Warmup is important

by barbaragarn

A warm-up (NOT stretching alone) will prepare your body for the strenuous demands you’re about to place on it. Increasing blood circulation will raise the temperature of your deep muscles, preparing the ligaments and tendons.

But don’t stretch and call it a warm-up! That’s actually harmful. You’ll want to WARM your muscles first, and THEN stretch them.

With a warm-up, you’ll both reduce injury and improve your performance; cold muscles do not absorb shock or impact as well as warm ones do. So you’ll increase muscle efficiency and reduce the likelihood of pulling or (gulp!) tearing something. Also, having warmer muscles will improve your reaction time!

A proper warm-up won’t just help you in the game, it will help afterwards too; warm-ups increase blood flow and oxygen delivery, making you less likely to get out of breath. This also helps make the body more effective at eliminating unwanted waste product accumulation in the muscles (lactic acid!), which leads to soreness.

What’s a good warm-up time? It’s different for everyone, but about five to eight minutes is standard.

I admit I do a warm-up, but not always a cool down. I’ve since learned that a cool down after vigorous activity will keep the blood from pooling in the extremities (making one feel light-headed). A cool down also flushes away the lactic acid, making it less likely that muscles will hurt the next day. This is called delayed onset muscle soreness, or “muscle fever.” 

A cool down should be about three to ten minutes, enough time for your heart rate to return to normal.

Do you do a warm-up and/or a cool down? Do you notice a difference when you leave off one or the other?

Weird hockey moments

by barbaragarn

Apparently the Roseville Level 2 on Friday, June 4, played so hard they broke the puck.
I have never ever heard of that happening before!

I remember one game at the College of St. Benedict when the puck got stuck in the open part of the Tuuk under a player’s skate. Everyone was skating around fiercely but the puck was nowhere to be found. The refs spotted it eventually, but it was really weird for a couple of moments when we all wondered where the heck the puck was.

And then there’s the time Derek Boogaard checked someone and ended up falling through the glass, oops.

Any other weird hockey moments anybody wants to share?