JMS Hockey

Hello JMS'ers! This novice game at SLP, this day of the week, this time slot is simply the best game of the week for me and my schedule, I so very much want this game to be around. If you know people available to sign up, it would mean a lot to me. Can an email be sent out? Thanks, everyone!

Hi Jason, thanks for your enthusiasm! If I could clone you for more bodies on the ice, I would! I did already send out an e-mail (actually, two, I think) notifying skaters of these levels who are in the SLP vicinity. I keep trying with this one and it keeps failing. Breaks my heart. I want so much to have an accessible game for the true beginners, but it just seems we don't have enough interested skaters. Bummer.

Can we add level 3 skaters to that game every week? Thanks.

It's impossible for jms to strike the perfect balance. There are a ton of players of all skill levels all asking for ice time. I have the utmost respect for all the effort and time they put in to make all of this work for us. JMS is a gift!... so to speak. I don't know what happened to all of the level 1 players, but two years ago, this Friday night game was fully booked by Sunday afternoon at the latest. If you wanted to play, you had to be on the ball!! With all of that said, I personally find it frustrating to play with players of such a higher skill level than me. The pace of the game is simply too fast for me and I find myself completely exhausted before the night is half over. Yet, I understand that if the level 3 players had not signed up, we wouldn't have had a game to play. So...what do ya do? If I want to play, and there are no other level one players out there, I have no choice but to play with 3's. Take the good with the bad I guess, because I'd rather play with 3's than not at all.

I played goal at the game in question, and I know it was hard for the Level 1's and 2's to cope with some very solid Level 3 players when the latter were on the attack. But I was impressed that they never gave up even when they were plainly gassed. (Truth be told, I was gassed, too, at the end, and feel bad I didn't give the Level 3 skaters more of a challenge the last 20 minutes or so.)

I think JMS may have missed on "Vote for your level" and may the "best" level win for the Friday night, Dec 20th game. It basically discourages the lower level players to sign up. The initial idea seemed to work that last two weeks, starting with Level 1 & 2, then open up to Level 3's mid week. WIth that said, reading the above comments it is bummer that the novice participation has went down. Those Friday night novice games at SLP were fun a couple years ago.

The 3 games next to my name are the only games I have ever played..I am the definition of a true novice. I do wish there was a game with true beginners. Maybe JMS started that way and everybody just got to good :). I am going to keep showing up to my "lower" level games. Everybody is always very accommodating and nice...no matter how bad I suck.

All of the skaters I played with over the last two years, were the same faces nearly every week, and I knew many of them by name. And 99% of them were easily qualified to be 2's. So I supposed the result isn't so stunning after all. We just need to find from new Novice skaters. :)