Next Practice:

Saturday, July 17
10:00 am
Northwood Park
(two hour practice)



Upcoming Practices: (2 hours long)


Locations:
Sunrise Park hockey rink: 9401 Bloomington Ferry Rd in Bloomington
Northwood Park hockey rink: 1st St and Northwood Dr in North St Paul Mapquest Link (Note: mapquest does not recognise "Northwood Dr" so use "Skillman Dr" if you map it.)

NOTE: Location changes

Questions: Post here or send an email to MNStingers@hotmail.com

Schedule updated

Not this sat but the 26th my friend should be able to make it. I still cant do anything but I'm still working on making a deeper bench.

I've been asked to work this weekend so I don't think I can make the 12th. I won't have any problem making the 6 pm practices.

I can't find a place with lights on at night for us to practice at 6pm (for the Sept 26 practice). Does anyone have any ideas? If not, I'll have to change the time to a daylight practice.

We can tape flashlights to our sticks.

Note time change for next practice (Sept 26)

Some of us are getting anxious for lax season, so we're having an informal "practice" on Saturday in Bloomington. Info is in the first post.

It'll be chilly, so I'm guessing we may just throw-around for an hour or until we're too cold or the balls are too frozen. (The LAX BALLS!! Get your mind out of the gutter!!)

PS-
If the hockey rink actually has ice by this weekend, we'll use the tennis courts instead. (They are just on the other side of the parking lot.) I think it's too early for ice, but who knows.

You can come down and join the pickup game on sunday night with us. Understand, however, that there is checking and quite a bit more intense than FC, like *real* stick checking. Plus its almost all high school students and I am the only one over 25. Niknak can give you an idea of the intensity.

Also, one thing to keep in mind is that plastic lax heads WILL break much more easily in the cold. I know this from some expensive experience. Even a ball hitting the sidewall can break the stick. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from getting out to practice, but if at all possible find some place indoors.

OG

Thanks, OG, I keep forgetting about those heads.

Unfortunately, I can't afford to rent out a place to play indoors right now. We have permission to use the racquetball court at our YMCA (we're members), but that's not really big enough for more than 2 people and it requires membership to the Y.

The atmosphere will feel just like it would in Des Moines that night, if we still had a game that night to go to.

We should offer to play the mascots half-time game.

Ha! That would be awesome! A Stingers Vs. Mascots game! They just better not put ringers in the mascot suits!

You put Cousins in one of those big suits and he aint gonna be all-star quality, regardless of how hard he tries. So ringers aint gonna help them much.

True, but even in the suit, many of those guys can out-run many of us.

True, he may not be All-Star quality, but I'd bet Cousins-in-a-mascot-suit quality is still higher than us!

All you need is some time to get acclimated to playing in the suit and you can be just as good as if you played without the suit. TC smacks home runs consistently. What you need is a suit designed well enough so it doesn't interfere with your movement during play. Just don't have too big of a head so you still have your stick movement. The hardest part to overcome is the vision. A lot of those costumes have very limited vision.

I'd like to see his stick skills in the mascot costume. He'd certainly have a lot more stamina than us. Just cross-check him to the ground and be really effective when he's rolling to try and get up. We gotta chance then.

Practice for Dec 5 is cancelled.

MCB and chef decided they don't want to come, and it was MCB's idea in the first place. I'm going to my cardio class instead.

Tentative date for first practice is March 27. See first post for details.

Looks like I'll probably miss this one since I'm planning on going to the Gopher baseball game being played at Target Field.

Don't see any reason I should miss this.

Note the time change for practice on Sat, March 27.

Weather looks good at this point, and the ice is off our hockey rink. (Just waiting for it to dry up a bit more.)

Upcoming practices also added to the first post.

Won't hurt the passing or catching ability, one way or the other. ;-)

We played Minneapolis SW (Aron Lipkin and Aime Caines team) last year. The varsity game got called because of darkness. It was really fun to watch because passes would disappear and reappear magically. There was lots of guesstimations by the people viewing as to where it was going to end up. Eventually you could triangulate the balls location by players running towards it when it hit the ground. I felt most sorry for the goalies. The game got called just as we were on a fast break by our leading scorer (avg 4 goals per game). That left it at a tie. Blah!

Is there an online calendar (ie. Google Calendar) for the practices that I can subscribe to?

No, there isn't. But they're all listed above, so you could enter them into your own system when you have a few minutes.

The practices are all on the calendar on the myfamily site too.

next practice: Sat, April 10, 1pm at Lexington Park

I picked up a 6-pack of pinnies to use when we're doing head-to-head practices. Should make it easier to keep track of who's on which side.

Woo hoo... also for anyone that goes to that practice we are haveing a cookout after practice at my house. It is BYOB..

Practice schedule updated.

Please note change of location for the North St Paul practices. We are going to use Northwood Park's paved hockey rink instead of the grass one at Casey Lake Park.

I'm working on finding a paved rink for the Roseville area practices (to replace Lexington Park). Will update when/if I find one.

I spent part of Sat driving around trying to find an asphalt rink to replace the Lexington one. I didn't have any luck, so for now, we'll stay at Lexington.

Only 5 practices left until Fann Cup!!

I passes a rink when I was on Dale St. yesterday. Here's a link to the map. It's called the North Dale Rec Center. The map doesn't show the rink though. It must be an older image. But the rink is there now. It's asphalt and has higher fences on the ends and it's in the same area as the one on Lexington.

Great, thanks! I'll keep that in mind for next year. (I'd rather not change the schedule for this year again.)

So when is the next practice?