Super Spitfires.

Joey Garland arrived at my accomodation on Monday at 7:30am ready to take me to the home of the Windsor Spitfires for the first time. A short journey to the WFCU Centre allowed me to briefly 'break the ice' with Joey (apologies for the pun) and establish what we had planned for the next few days.
Monday was fitness testing like pull ups, bench press and 5-10-5 agility (FMS

included), Tuesday and Wednesday more of a shadow and watch days, taking in what the Canadian Ice Hockey environment was like and watch a few trial games, then Thursday was the final Blue vs White game to make the players to make the final cut for the team squad.

 Even though this is an amateur club, I was surrounded by top class facilities and staff for my duration and I couldn't stop thinking that it was in a setup like that which I wish to work in the future. Joey had regular contact with potential NHL players, a few who had been first round draft picks, and some time with a player from the New Jersey Devils, who was a product of the Windsor Spitfires before.

I throughly enjoyed watching the ice hockey matches, and as expected, there was typical bout of fisty cuffs, resulting in blood stained kit and bashed up faces to deal with. The game is really fast with huge impacts against the boards and pucks flying around at 100mph. In addition these fearless ice warriors were huge; most greater than 6foot tall and weighing about 16 stone which further impressed me as they swooshed around the rink with minimal effort.

During the main season all this quality skill is on show in front of around 6000 seated spectators and a live TV audience each week...

.. and they are all between 15 and 20 years old. 

Incredible.

To close, I would like to hand great thanks to Joey for giving me this 'behind the scenes' pass and developing my learning experiences and also the players and other members of the Spits for making me feel so welcome over the last week, I've learnt a lot about where I want my future career path to lead to and I wish them the best for the upcoming season.

Take a look at http://www.windsorspitfires.com/ for more information!