Playing goal in street shoes.

[bigfatdynamo]

I know, how ghetto can you get; however, I have been asked to play in a ball hockey street shoe tournament this weekend. The game will be played in rarely maintained lacrosse box (rough asphalt) with an orange ball. I have already duct taped up my leg pads (they look friggen sweat, I just did the inner pad, toe, knee rolls, and anywhere the deflector dealie touched ground from normal movement. Anyways, I have played on the surface once wearing the ice gear (the duct tape stood up awesome) but the lateral movement is non-existent. Now, I have some groupies from a few of my classes coming out to watch the games, how can I impress them without relying on my amazing lateral movement. We played an “exhibition” game against some scrubs last weekend and beat them 3-1 3-0 5-0, however, they all smoked in the breaks and it wasn’t much of a challenge for our guys to outrun ‘em. Anyways, to make a long story short, anyone who plays like this on a regular bases have any words of wisdom? How can I play, just rely on the positions and stay on my feet since I doubt I will be able to get a butterfly slide to work. Also, is there anything that is cheap and slides better then duct tape, maybe something that I can apply over the duct tape?

[SpyderMan2k4]

Hey,

I actually used to play a lot on asphalt and tennis shoes. I had taken the plastic covers from those cheap mylec pads and cut them up to fit over my regular pads, they slid well, but that's probably more than you're lookin to do (I have a friend who uses duct tape and he seems to love it).

As far as your movement, I find that the increased agility on shoes CAN make up for the lack of sliding ability. Just play your positional game and try to anticipate the play the best you can! Sorry I'm not more helpful, but that's all I've got. Good luck!

[MrMikeEMike]

See if you can get a hold of some old coke bottles or laundry detergent bottles. If you do a search for "Mont coke bottle mod" you'll see what i'm talking about and why.

MtA

[bigfatdynamo]

I searched the mont coke bottle mod, and the website where mont put the guide no longer hosts the file. The thread appeared, but the links were dead.

[MrMikeEMike]

Okay, I'll help ya out here.

Mont had method of taking old coke bottles (I think they were the 1-liter bottles) and cutting them so they covered the inside toe area of the pad very nicely. His method was pretty detailed in showing how to attach the cut bottles as well.

That plastic is pretty durable, and it's a cheap method of protecting your pads. It was determined later that the bottles in Europe are thicker than the bottles in the US / Canada, which is why I said using laundry detergent bottles might work better because the material is thicker.

What I'd recommend, since you've got duct tape on there is see if you can't cut some 2 liter bottles into a long strip (cut off the top, cut off the bottom, make one long piece) and tape that in place around the inside edge of your pads. Trim to fit. That SHOULD give you some slide and protect the pads well.

Hope that helps, and sorry I can't give you more details.

MtA