Urban Vancouver

Improving at Floorball

By Richard Eriksson on October 12, 2007 - 10:09am

Last night was the third night of floorball at Mulgrave School in West Vancouver, where as usual we had 20 minutes of drills and warmup and played what seemed like an unending game. I got one or two assists, depending on how you define assist. (Is it like hockey where if you set up the guy who gets the first assist, you also get an assist?) I didn't score, but came close 3 times, and was really happy about the chances, as I had just the right amount of patience and was open for just long enough to turn around and take a shot. The first shot went off the cross-bar (almost perfect placement!) and another sailed past the post.

(Last week, just to keep track, I scored a goal and got one assist.)

I'm liking the drills quite a bit, and can sense improvement in my game. I still have no idea where I'm supposed to be, that is, what position I should be in during each situation. I remembered the basketball practices in high school that would be only a short warmup and then purely strategy: where we were supposed to be in set plays for offense and defense. That is, no 3-on-2-2-on-1 drills (my absolute favorite basketball drill, where the 3 players run down the court against 2 defenders, then the shooter goes back on defense while the 2 former defenders switch to offense going the other way). I don't know if I'll get to have one of those strategy practices—no, the correct, European word is "training—but for this session I'm happy to work on skill development. I'm at the point where I can feel cool passing back and forth in warmup with players that have played for more than a decade, and I'm getting better at patience with the ball and shot accuracy. Defense is something I'm learning by watching the Swiss and Swedish players, then trying to copy what they do, with limited success.

They haven't announced it yet on the BC Floorball blog, but with the strike over, floorball returns to the Roundhouse in Vancouver's Yaletown on Mondays. With dragon boating over, I'm looking forward to having that as my second weekly cardio workout, at least until it snows on the mountains enough for me to g snowshoeing on the weekend.