Kevin Rempel: And We're Off

Time sure does fly.

It wasn’t too long ago when I started a countdown on my calendar to the day we leave for Norway for the Ice Sledge Hockey World Championships.

I had two full weeks planned out of which days I was going to be on the ice, which days I would be in the gym and where I could still fit in life in between. I felt like if I followed my plan exactly how I laid it out, I would be good to go once the trip starts.

And yes, I am ready.

All of us in the Toronto area and even other teammates from further away committed ourselves to getting together as much as possible for a ton of ice time. During the start of the season, we were on the ice on average twice a week. Lately, we’ve been getting our skate on four or five times a week with nearly half the team together.

As a Paralympic team, that’s always a struggle because we have guys spread out all across the province and country. Our team depends on each other to put in the work, and we’ve got the guys to get the job done.

Saturday afternoon our team will be meeting in Toronto to head up north to the Canadian Forces Base, Borden. We will be spending some time practicing there and work with the Soldier On Program.

If you haven’t seen, you should check out these two videos on our teammate Dominic Larocque. Dominic lost his leg while fighting for our country while in Afghanistan and is probably our biggest ambassador when it comes to the Soldier On Program. His is also one of our greatest strengths on the team.

About Dominic: http://youtu.be/zORWvkv1eS4

Dominic Larocque, super athlete: http://youtu.be/v8G5IA6BFVk

From Borden we will be returning to Toronto and hopping on a plane to head to Norway. We’ve got about 10 hours of flying to look forward to, then a two-hour bus ride before we get to Hamar where we will be for the duration of our trip. Flying does get a little boring but most of us carry iPad’s or MacBooks to keep ourselves occupied. I think almost everyone has something from Apple now.

As it stands right now, we have Norway, Italy, and Korea in our pool. USA, Japan, Czech Republic and Estonia are in the other. Personally, I have never played Italy before, but I’m confident to say that Norway will likely be our biggest competitor of those three.

Really, it doesn’t matter who we’re going to face, we’re going there for one reason and one reason only.

To win.