[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Richard—

Thanks for offering your helpful suggestions. I took your advice in several places and feel it improved the piece.

Glenn

Originally Posted by Richard G

S1 - I wonder if there was a more entertaining team name than 'Mini-Mites'? Something that might licence 'astronaut'. Little confused by 'plops onto' and 'rest wobble after'.
“Mini-Mites” is the name of the age division for 5-6-year-olds in North American Youth Hockey. Children this age must be well padded, and they really do look like little astronauts when they are suited up. Many are also brand new to skating, so they are exploring the ice rink as if it were the surface of the moon.

S3 - Think you could make a bit more of the 'mother hen' image' than simply 'appeared' (can't they flap or flutter or cluck or ...)
Good suggestion. I made the adjustment.

S4 - It's clever but those 'winged sandals' don't convince, perhaps adjusting the rather bumpy L2 to include reference to speed?
I changed “sailed” to “whizzed” to avoid mixing metaphors. Unfortunately, “whizzed” also has a rather distasteful slang meaning, but I trust that won’t be a problem in context.

S5 - Hadn't thought of Vandals being synonymous with confidence (possibly they're Vigorous?)
I had in mind the Vandals [capital “V”] that gave the Roman Empire so much grief. Genseric sacked Rome in the fifth century with admirable confidence.

S6 - L2, do you need 'more'?
I wanted to suggest that the dad is nagging the coach to let his son have more playing time.

S7 - perhaps something other than 'deftly' (easily?)
I had a problem avoiding repetition of words meaning “skill” (S4L1), “expertly” (S5L2), “deftly” (S7L1). I see that I need another syllable in S7L1, so I changed “deftly” to “skillfully,” concluding that it is far enough away from S4L1 that the repetition will not be noticeable.