Ringette

If I waited any longer for Calliope to do this post, I don't think it would ever happen, so here you go. On February 23rd, Calliope went and tried playing ringette. The Ann Arbor league just started last year and is supposedly the only one in the U.S.A. They've had people from Canada come down and teach them and even donate equipment. They mainly play Canadian teams as there are no other teams down here. They hope to go to North Bay this December for the 50th anniversary tournament. Calliope really enjoyed it and we signed her up for the Spring session. She will play 5 Sundays in a row starting April 14th (because we needed something else to do in April). We will be buying her skates but she is borrowing the rest of the equipment. If she still likes it after the Spring session and wants to continue to play we will invest in buying her, her own equipment. Ringette isn't played in the same rink as their usual skating lessons. She was at the Ann Arbor Ice Cube and was skating on the Olympic sized rink. The girl in the blue jersey that is close to her in many of the pictures was her "buddy", an older girl teaching her how to play. They played a little scrimmage at the end and each of the new girls (I think there were almost 10) had a buddy with them which made the ice really full. Hopefully now that the pictures are posted I can get Calliope to add her own words soon.

The man in the red shirt is the main coach and it is his daughter who expressed interest in learning how to play. We discovered that his daughter goes to the same school as our kids (in a higher grade so we didn't really know her) and they live in Ypsilanti as well.