Hockey Update

So today, Walt made some good progress during hockey.  He's been skating on his own for a couple of weeks now, but today, there were a few milestones he accomplished.  First, the big problem that he'd had in the past is that he wasn't able to get up on his own after falling.  He would need either the assistance of a coach/bigger kid or a walker, but early on, today, he realized that he could get up on his skates on his own.  This is key for him to continue moving forward. 

This first video is of Walt skating on his own. A couple of notes here - it really looks like Walt skates over early on, and knocks the kid in the blue jersy down, but he never really makes contact with him. It's funny, from my camera's perspective, it looks like Walt just skates over, "takes care of" that other kid, and then just skates off on his own, but that wasn't the case.  Secondly, this is the first time that Walt has really been on his own without anyone encouraging or helping him as he skates.  At about 1:00 into the video, Walt falls down, and begins the process of getting up on his own.  The video doesn't show it to completion, but he did get up on his own, and throughout the day, he got much better at that .

Much has happened between the last video and this one.  First of all, Walt has been skating on his own for a while, but also, a "coach" has handed Walt his stick to help him balance, but it was too long, so I went over and got Walt his own stick to make things easier on him.  At that point, he immediately went from the area of kids learning skating skills to one of the other zones.  It would help to give a bit of defitnition of how they lay out the rink.  The Learn To Play program at Affton encompasses all 4-8 year olds with a very wide variety of skills.  In any given session, the three hockey zones are separated into chaos, controlled chaos, and skating drills.  Once I handed Walt his stick, he went straight for the Neutral Zone (controlled chaos) which is kids working on puck skills including passing, shooting, and generally playing with the puck.  He did this on his own without the urging of any of his coaches.   It was like once he had a stick in his hand, he  thought that he needed to start playing with a puck. The next video is Walt passing back and forth with one of the older kids.  Based on where I took the video, it's not easy to pick him out, but he's the kid in the center of the frame that is passing with the bigger kid.

This next video is Walt on his own near the far net.  He's kind of struggling to get good control of the puck, but eventually he does shoot the puck into the net.  He was very focused on getting that done, and it was fantastic to see him actually put he biscuit in the basket.    Again, I'm sorry for not being a better photographer, but Walt's the farthest player, and during this clip he's alone at the net.  I tried to keep him at the center of all of the videos.

This last video isn't very eventful, but he does do a great job of keeping his feet when he would have earlier fallen down.  For much of the shot, he's on the right side of the frame and you can see him going back and forth