Hitting My Stride

I feel confident.  I'm playing really well lately, and I just know I'm going to continue to play better and improve.  Yesterday, during practice my coach came up to me and said, "Teddy, the game is so much easier when you know what you're doing, isn't it?"  I said, "Yeah, and I just feel so much more confident than I ever have right now.  It's unbelievable."  He told me that it's showing and that I need to keep being a leader because I'm taking some big steps as a player.  The biggest thing I need to do is keep pushing myself to be better every day.  I can always get better and being strong mentally--pushing myself to the limit every day--is what's going to help me reach the potential I know I have.  I feel so good on the ice right now.  In games, I feel totally in control, and I know I'm impacting the game in a big way when I'm on the ice, and in practice, I feel great too--I don't feel tired when I know I probably should be--but there are still some things I need to work on and focus on to become even better.  

I'm finding my rhythm.  Every day, I wake up at 6:45 to go to work, and from work I go straight to practice, then from practice, I go straight to the gym, then from the gym, I go straight to the dinner table.  You can imagine how hungry all this activity makes me.  But I love staying busy.  I absolutely love it because I know there are not a lot of kids in juniors who choose to or get the opportunity to stay busy like I am with this job.  And then I get some well-deserved sleep (sometimes.)  Sometimes, my roommate and I stay up and play cribbage until the late hours of the night...We have a year-long battle going on.  So far I'm losing 23-14.  I know...disgraceful.  But I talked to my parents the other night, and we were talking about how much of a 180 I've gone through in the past year.  Last year at this time, I was in Bismarck, uncomfortable and unhappy with how I was playing and how much I was playing and just my overall situation on the team.  This year, I'm having so much fun, I'm brimming with confidence, and I'm a leader on the team, which is a great opportunity for me.  It's a responsibility that I wouldn't have received if I was playing anywhere else.  Of course, I'm keeping my confidence in check, though.  I'm not the kind of kid who is cocky or who shows people my confidence by pretending I'm superior to everyone in the locker room.  My confidence is just in the way I play, the swagger that I carry on the ice--knowing that I'll make a pass or stand up and make a hit or win a battle in the corner for a puck.

I'm excited that I'm feeling so confident so early on in the season, but I know I have a lot of work left to do.  I'm really excited to see just how much better I can become in this long marathon of a season.  I'm starting to hit my stride now, but what will happen as the season goes on?  Stay tuned to find out.