Training Camp

Hey everyone!

Contrary to what I said in the last post I did attend training camp with USC down in Escondido this weekend. I scouted out the team from the ice itself, wearing jeans and borrowing a lefty stick. Here are a few notes/observations:
- Zach Keith is starting to find his groove. After a shaky tryouts, Keith shook off some of his rust and making his case to start.
- This year's freshman phenom? Without a doubt it is Nick Helmer out of Minnetonka, MN. He's a deft stick handler with a precision shot and a lot of speed. Expect big things.
- A potential factor for the semester ahead... A solid three or four Trojan players have a class ending at 6 pm on Fridays. This could make Friday home games particularly interesting roster-wise.
- Because of this wrinkle and heavy traffix, Friday's session had a relatively low attendance, while Saturday's was more like a traditional practice.
- I would have more notes from Saturday, except I spent most of the session in the hospital. During a passing/shooting drill I was positioned near the far corner in line with some of the players. A slapshot deflected off of the goalies stick, the crossbar and then hit me right below the eyebrow on my upper right eyelid. Without going into the gory details, a sizeable gash was opened up and my right eye swelled up somerhing awful. For a while I wasn't sure if I'd lost vision in that eye for good. Luckily I should make a full (albeit ugly) recovery. Maybe I should stick to the pressbox.....
- Special thanks to team trainer Cindy Bailey and former player Ryan Farias for their unbelievable help.

That's all I've got. Look for a roster to be posted Tuesday and be sure to tune in on Thursday.