On Wednesday 23rd January we had our much looked forward to visit from the Cardiff Devilsthe only professional ice hockey team in all of Wales. Ice Hockey is the world's fastest team game

Brent Pope the MD came along with two players to tell us a little about the game and the players themselves. Brent from Ontario in Canada was a sucesful player himself as well as broadcaster (eg 2006 Torino Winter Olympics for BBC). After becomming a UK citizen in 2002 he represented the UK twice in the world Championshiops and was captain of the Senior Great Britain Hockey team. He is also working on his Masters Degree in Sports Development & Coaching (clever old thing)

Mike Prpich who originally came from a small town called Kenaston in the province ofSaskatchewan in Canada. He told us that he grew up on a farm with and was skating from the age of 2! He played for the University of Dakota, then New Mexico before coming to play in Cardiff, he scored 38 goals last season but frustratingly injured his knee this season. He showed us his knee and told us a little about the surgery it was yeuchie!

Phil Hill comes from nearer to home in Wenvoe,and went to Bishop of Llandaff school playing Rugby most of the time he soon developed a skill for ice hockey to and played for Sheffield Steelerswhilst doing his degree studies in Nottingham University. He is also currently unable to play through injury.

They passed around a puck made from vulcanised rubber and everyone felt how heavy and solid it was. Bret told us that it can travel at over 100mph so it was important to wear protective gear. They had brought the equipment and needed a volunteer as you can imagine nearly every hand went in the air. The shin pads, pelvic protector, shoulder pads, elbow pads and helmet were toped with the Red Dragon shirt and an ice hockey stick.

Having told us a lot about the game they asked questions to see how well the pupils had listened, a little incentive such as a program seemed to work very well and everyone tried and in fairness answered some tricky questions.

There are several fans already in the school and there will certainly be a lot more after this visit. The Devils have a school sponsor program and give a number of tickets to schools, so we are looking forward to the 3rd Feb game against Nottingham Panthers with a lot of excitement.

Well done to Luis for taking all these fab photos, Claudia took a few too and we will add those as well.

The devils also brought with them 20 tickets as part of the school sponsorship program, these we given to the children via a competition to design a poster you can see below