Team Canada is full of heroines.  22 athletes, 22 reasons.  There were some athletes that did not get a chance to play much but kept working hard in practice and kept their heads up.  There were athletes that played on one leg, athletes that played with one arm.  Athletes that played through fear, anxiety, anticipation and against a great team.  Each and every one of them is a heroine, and each and every one of them were heroines for each moment in the WRC.

We met with Team Canada on the Sunday morning, and I told them I was incredibly proud to be able to walk into a rink and say “I’m with them”.  It was an honour and a privelige to do that.  To point at that group of women and say that I am associated in any way with them is a professional and personal thrill.  I can only thank them all for the chance to do it.

Wow.  It has been a while between posts.  I could give you the regular list of excuses, but I will just say that I have not been up to it.  With the WRC going on, and the emotional, mental and physical toll that took on everyone, we just needed a break.  All that, and I did not even play in a game! 
In the meantime, the holiday season approaches, and we have stuff to help with that.  We now have an online store with ringette clothing and memorabilia ranging from hats, to baby stuff, to even dog shirts.  Check it out.

2 weeks away is a long time.  The trip was fun and a chance to recharge the batteries.  With only 6 weeks before the start of worlds there is a lot of work to do and a lot to get ready for.  Despite the fact that there is a lot of work, there is also the knowledge that this is going to be the BIGGEST EVENT in the history of our sport.  Good times!

I like Meg.  She asks good questions.  From time to time I will answer them here (in my ringette voice).

1.  How are you doing?

Excited/nervous/tired/envigorated/confident – other than that, not much.  With the national team going and preparations for WRC well under way there is a lot going on and there are a lot emotions/thoughts/concepts that go along with that.

 2.  How did you spend summer vacation?

Vacation?  We had our first conference style AGM, hosted in lovely Miramichi, NB.  Then we had our first meeting for the new Board of Directors, in historic Quebec City.  Then we had our first joint committees meeting in rustic Cantley, Quebec and finally had our friends from Team Canada in Canada’s Capital, Ottawa, for a national team camp.  Whew.  In between time, we launched Come Try Ringette, got ready for the WRC (sold almost 2K tix already – and no one is thinking ringette quite yet!) signed on for partnerships with our friends at DR and Powertek, and continued work on LTAD.

3.  What you WISH you had been doing all summer?

Sure we wish we had been counting our extra funding from Sport Canada, or maybe sending a delegation to help launch Ringette Australia (someday!) but all around it was a pretty good summer!

Thanks to Darren for the link, there is a cool program called MatchIT.ca that links up IT professionals with non-profits that could use some help from a pro.  Since IT does not appears to be shrinking as a thing for us to worry about, this looks like it is worth checking out.

The Soo did a great job in getting some specialized sports and activity funding from the City of the Soo.  Well done.  They are making a video, and I trust they will post it on You Tube for us all to enjoy.

Our friends over at True Sport would echo this sentiment whole-heartedly.  At Freakonomics, they are talking about a French study that showed that sport led to the riots in the suburbs of Paris a few years back. 

The contrary arguement, and the better one, is that bad sport led to bad outcomes.  Conversely, good sport, leads to good outcomes like teamwork, discipline, and good citizenship.

We all know that ringette is more on the good sport side than the bad sport side.  How can we get even further on the good side?

 Update question – Could more ringette have helped in the banlieues of Paris?  Can it help when there are disagreements in Canada?  

Update Update  – An intrepid reader asks “what is good sport?”.  Good question.  Good sport is sport where the development of the person is greater than the development of the athlete which in turn is greater than the development of the team.  The sport in the banliues of Paris was known as more of throwing out a soccer ball and letting boys play until someone scored or until someone bled.  Terrible sport. 

Women in Coaching a tough topic.  We want more women to coach, but we don’t want to tell men that they are not welcome either.  It turns out that this problem has become nearly an epidemic in the NCAA too.  There are a lot of problems, but few obvious solutions on this one.  We have to keep working on this and keep making sure that women have every chance and every empowerment to coach our sport from bunnies to the national team.

Meg Fowler is good at starting memes.  I will try answer them as best I can, on behalf of the ringette part of me.  Here is the first one:

 1. Tell me a crazy anecdote from your childhood that will make me laugh out loud.
We used to wear figure skates and the goalkeepers used to pink sticks.  Also, we wore track suits when we played that made us look like the 1972 German olympic team. Yikes.

2. Tell me where you would be today if you could be anywhere doing anything with anyone… and money’s no object!
Starting out the training process for Team Canada at the 2010 Olympics.  It is a long ways off still, but we can keep dreaming our Olympic dream.  It won’t be in 2010, or 2014 or probably for a while after that, but it can happen if we keep on growing.

3. If there was a song that describes your life right now, what is it? If you can find a video of it on YouTube, include that!
This One:

4. What annoying habit should they send you to rehab for?
Telling people that we are shrinking when really we have been growing for over 5 straight years.

5. What do you wish you were eating right this moment?
Team Finland’s lunch!

Put your ringette responses to these questions in the comments or on your own blog.

Ringette is making a comeback in BC’s capital!  Victoria ringette is coming back and it is great to see them again!

Starting a new ringette association a whole lot of work and it goes to show how dedicated our community is.  They have done a lot of the groundwork and they are now seeing some of the fruits of their labours.  Does anyone have any advice for our friends in Victoria?  Who out there has started an association successfully?