IBNeko's Journal-Nyo~!

12 games into our 20-game season, Kodiaks 2 finally notched up a win! We beat Lee Valley Vampires 1-0 last night. That single goal was scored with about ten minutes to go, and it was a long ten minutes, and especially a long last minute on the bench after my final shift, waiting to see if we'd do it. I was literally crying in the post-game huddle and handshake line. This team, this team that we dragged into existence in the face of multiple obstacles, this amazing bunch of women. We won, we won, we won.

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The university hockey season is nearly over. Huskies have played our last league game (I say 'our' but I was actually playing with Warbirds in a different city at the time), Varsity is coming up Saturday week, and then there's Nationals in April before we move into summer ice training. We had our Varsity dinner on Tuesday in Clare College and I became sharply aware during that evening that all things come to an end and some people will graduate this summer and leave. This is a university, people are always arriving and leaving, but it's nearly thirty years since I first arrived in Cambridge and I'm still not used to friends leaving.

I love everyone in this photograph (and a couple more teammates who didn't make it to the dinner).

Varsity: Saturday 14 March, tickets go on general sale at noon today, I didn't make the Huskies ("mixed 2nds") Varsity squad but I'm playing in the alumni game and helping out with (at least) Huskies and Women's Blues.

This is possibly my favourite photo yet of me playing ice hockey:

1. In women's hockey I am big
2. We play non-checking, that doesn't mean non-contact. I am entirely legally shoving that attacking player away from the net.
3. See how far the goalie is from the net? My linemate and I cleared the puck on that occasion. The visiting team scored 20 goals on us (ouch), but not that one.

I had a little run of "brief meetings with old hockey friends" in the last two weekends. A few words, a hug, sometimes just a wave in passing while we both briefly occupied the same ice rink. All of them put a smile on my face.

Saturday before last was the Varsity matchup between Oxford Vikings A and Cambridge Narwhals at Cambridge rink, before my Kodiaks 2 team played visiting team Invicta Dynamics. Three of my tournament buddies from Biarritz were on the Vikings team. The next day Kodiaks were away at Bristol. I had an expected brief chat with my friend C from Hull camp but also complete surprise appearances from M who coaches Hull camp and goalie J, both of whom are tournament buddies. M was there with the away team for the previous game, J now lives in Bristol, which I theoretically knew but had forgotten.

Saturday just gone I had an evening game in Peterborough with Warbirds. I arrived a bit early and saw the previous game in progress: Phantoms Dev women were playing Streatham Storm Dev (my first ever hockey team). I recognised the jerseys first, and then a bunch of the faces. I dumped my kit in the changing room and went to lurk next to their bench and cheer them on for their last ten minutes. The timing worked out for me to see the end of their game (they won!) and walk with them back to their changing room before I needed to join Warbirds in ours.

Books on pre-order:

1. Platform Decay (Murderbot 8) by Martha Wells (5 May)
2. Radiant Star (Imperial Radch) by Ann Leckie (12 May)
3. Unrivaled (Game Changers 7) by Rachel Reid (1 Jun 2027)

The release of the third Heated Rivalry book - which was only announced in January after the TV adaptation got wildly popular - is pushed back by eight months. I'm assuming this is to allow Rachel Reid more time to finish it and/or engage with the adaptation of the second book, The Long Game.

Books acquired in February: none (wow)

Borrowed books read in February:

1. The Hidden Oracle (Trials of Apollo 1) by Rick Riordan [3]
2. Camp Half-Blood Confidential by Rick Riordan [3]
3. The Dark Prophecy (Trials of Apollo 2) by Rick Riordan [3]
4. The Burning Maze (Trials of Apollo 3) by Rick Riordan [3]
5. The Tyrant's Tomb (Trials of Apollo 4) by Rick Riordan [3]
6. Camp Jupiter Confidential by Rick Riordan [3]
7. The Tower of Nero (Trials of Apollo 5) by Rick Riordan [3]
8. The Singer of Apollo (Percy Jackson and the Olympians 5.5) by Rick Riordan

It's been a really intense month, mostly with ice hockey commitments, so what reading I have managed has been entirely the ongoing Riordan read-through. Trials of Apollo successfully grows Apollo from intensely irritating in the first few chapters of the first book to someone I cried over in the last book. Plus I have now watched both seasons of the Disney+ adaptation of Percy Jackson and the Olympians and oh boy do I have Opinions, especially on the second season. They get a lot of details right, the casting is excellent, and yet they get the heart of the story so so wrong. (Will I still watch season 3 when it comes out? Probably! Maybe they won't mess it up as badly?)

Anyway. Onward into March.

[3] Physical book

Both finals ended up being USA-Canada. Both finals I expected USA were more likely to win, actually wanted Canada to win, felt it was possible Canada might actually win for a majority of the game, only to have USA win in 3v3 OT. I didn't manage to watch either game entirely conventionally.

The women's final was on at the same time as Women's Blues "strength and conditioning" at the university sports centre. (The team gets an hour a week in term time in the Team Training Room, supervised by a personal trainer who's developed a programme for us to follow that's tailored to the needs of ice hockey. I love it, it's such a great perk of playing for the university.) My friend C and I arrived early and asked Will the PT to get the game up on the big screen, so we could follow it while we trained, and it was very exciting. A hardcore of about six of us then watched the last five minutes or so of the second period on a laptop at the end of the room, and then scattered at speed to bike to our respective destinations before the third period started.

The men's final took place while I was driving a large vehicle full of Kodiaks to Bristol (nine people: eight players with kits, one coach). My phone was paired to the car sound system, and I had the iPlayer coverage playing through it from our last pickup point (because obviously I didn't want to be messing with my phone while on the motorway). We had about half an hour of curling commentary that we only half-listened to, and then I turned up the volume for the game itself. With excellent timing, the game-winning goal was scored when we were a few minutes away from arriving at Bristol ice rink. I would still like to watch back at least the highlights of the game and actually see the bits of skating that had the commentators get especially excited.