The weekend of January 28-30 Beckett had a hockey tournament in Oswego County. He played five games in three days, more than he's played in his life. Friday's game was at 1:30 PM so we had to take him out of school early to get to Fulton by 30 min before game time. That game, he played out of his mind, like I've never seen him play before. I think he had four breakaways from beating the defensemen at the red line or his own blue line. He took some great shots including two that went just a hair over the net on the far side. His passing was perfect and he scored one assist as well as one goal. At the end of the game all the kids were preparing to fist bump and they announced that Beckett was the game MVP for his team. He got a hat for being game MVP, and the teams exchanged team pins. It was a huge high. I only took one video, unfortunately, because I was honestly shocked at how amazing he was playing.
Saturday morning's game was the same in many respects--Beckett played amazing again, with great passing and some scoring opportunities. They came back from a 0-2 deficit with two minutes to go, tying the game with just a few seconds left. They played an overtime period which was scoreless, and then went to a shootout (I guess because it was a tournament game, they had to play to a win). It seemed that the other parents on the bench were as clueless as I was about the order of things after regular play. I was not surprised to see that Beckett was not selected as one of the first three shootout shooters, as he's not a great shooter and had never contemplated or practiced a shootout scenario. Both teams scored two goals in the shootout so again, I was not sure what would happen next. Then the coach sent three more kids back onto the ice, including Beckett. Two went back to the bench, and Beckett was left by himself. I learned later that the other two kids selected for the second round of the shootout had both declined to go first, leaving only Beckett. He took a shot and the goalie saved it. The kid from the other team shot and scored. For some reason that I don't understand, the second round of shootout was sudden death when the first round was not. (If the first round had been sudden death, Beckett's team would have won.)
Beckett was devastated that he had failed to score and that his failure to score had cost his team the win in a very dramatic game. Even though his team had one more game later that morning, we went back home so that he could regroup instead of going out for breakfast with the team.
Games three and four the kids played great again, and they won. Sunday afternoon they played in the championship game against the team that had beaten them in the shootout, and they lost. They looked tired after four games, and I think they were ready to be done playing hockey! But it was fun to all get to watch him together--Jeff and Joan brought Beckett up that morning, and then Reed and Theo and I met them there for the championship game.
The one video I have of one of Beckett's scoring chances.
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