E- Basketball, Basketball, Basketball, Hockey

Yup, it was a busy 3 months. When Joey decided to come home to Canada this summer, it sent me into overdrive. I knew I had to jump at the chance to have him in Vancouver coaching with Split Second Basketball.

We've already got a great program...and adding Joey makes it even better.  There are so many reasons that's it's good to have Joey in town, I won't even try to write them down. However, our undertaking didn't come without stress.

I still had my full time job and had a really good time at work. We're near the end of our second year together and have really gotten to know each other. Here's one of the only pictures we have of DFD's tallest crew ever....6'9", 6'7", 6'7" and 6'4". Unfortunately we will be splitting up next month and going to new halls. It was good while it lasted.

The basketball started off as a scramble to find gyms...and then

Got even busier. Here is our first class of the "All Girls" session at Crofton. Finny and Elodie won the  Queen of the Court awards.

Jeevan and Chris Lee won the King of the Court awards at our Saints only programs.

Fortius

False Creek

Kitchener. It was really full on!

Here's Finny in a pre-season MoreSports tournament, showing the type of intensity she always plays with.

Finny has a keen eye for a player dribbling too high. It didn't take her long to pounce on this guy for the steal and breakaway lay-up!

Who has more intensity?

Lukey backstopped his 3 on 3 to a huge tournament victory at the North Shore Winter Club. It was a huge turning point in the season for the boys. Even though they were representing the Mutants here, all the boys were from the Arbutus Club. 

After very few wins in the last 2.5 years of competitive games, the boys came alive in this tournament. Lukey was like a wall in net...which seemed to give his team confidence. They skated hard and miraculously won the tournament. 

UPDATE: The coolest part of this tournament was the aftermath. The boys returned back to their Arbutus team with renewed confidence and went on a completely unprecedented, and unexpected win streak. After Christmas they won 11 of 12 games at one point, and were one of the best teams in the league. 

No doubt it was a team effort. Players stepped up in a way we didn't see coming...particularly Nicholas Hart, John Demianczuk, Brett Nash, Ginger Worland. Zach and Joey continued to be really strong. However, nobody made a bigger impact than Lukey in the turn around. They were a different team when he was in net. 

Why was he so strong?  He loves the position. He studies it. He is able to get low and move low into the butterfly. It's hard to score on him 5 hole and he also gets his legs really wide. The only real hole right now is up high, which has more to do with his size than anything. He sure seems to love it right now, so we'll see where he goes with it...but he sure had an amazing (and positively reinforcing) experience this, his first season in goal. 

Lukey was also really proud to be the team's ironman, the only player to play in every game this season.