What a challenge it has been to organize my beer league hockey team, "The Renegades" this season. On August 22nd I received an e-mail from the Edmonton Recreational Hockey League reminding me that the captain's meeting was upcoming in a couple of days, and that the 30 game winter season would get underway on September 1st. I knew it was coming, but I was kind of taken by surprise. At that point I only had five players commited to the roster, and not anywhere near the required league fees collected. Between league fees, insurance, jerseys and supplies it costs over $10,000 for the team to play the season. It appears that the weak economy has made it difficult for a lot of players to come up with the cash to play. Most of the next week was spent trying to recruit players. I managed to convince a number of players from previous seasons to return, and also managed to find several new guys. There simply was no time for a practise before the season got underway. Last night we played the first of our 30 games. All of our guys were pretty rusty. There were many guys that have never met each other before. We played the Chiefs at Confederation Arena at 11:00PM. We had a slow start and quickly fell behind 4-1. As the game went on we started to come together, and battled back. With a little over three minutes left in the game we were behind by a score of 5-4. Then the Chiefs scored a late goal that was kind of a back breaker. Later in the game we took two minor penalties and the Chiefs managed to shovel in a couple more. The night ended in defeat by a score of 8-4. But, I'm optimistic that this group of guys can come together and be competitive. Our next game is in a week, on September 8th.
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