December 19, 2016 at 2:56 p.m.
RIA celebrates new addition
RIA celebrates new addition
On Saturday, the association dedicated the new James E. Cleary Sports Complex, an addition to the Rhinelander Ice Arena that includes new high school locker rooms and showers, a weight room and an open area for exercises and shooting pucks.
"This is awesome," said rink manager Brett Aylesworth. "It's been a lot of work for a lot of different people - from all of our contractors trying to get this done on time to all of our volunteers to all of the people who donated money, to the extra donors we got to help finish off the project. We're definitely fired up."
The major donor to the project was the Cleary Foundation, which ponied up $450,000 for the project. The final $350,000 of that sum was presented Saturday morning.
While the Cleary Foundation was the primary donor, several others helped with a project that - between the new structure, renovating existing locker rooms and replacing the scoreboards at the RIA, totalled more than $600,000. Aylesworth Dermatology and the Hodag Blue Line Club each donated $25,000. The Rhinelander Athletic Booster Club and Park City Credit Union ponied up $10,000 each while Nicolet National Bank donated $5,000. In total nearly 40 businesses and organizations donated either money, product or labor to the project.
"This is awesome. It's been a lot of work for a lot of different people - from all of our contractors trying to get this done on time to all of our volunteers to all of the people who donated money, to the extra donors we got to help finish off the project. We're definitely fired up," Aylesworth said. "It's amazing to see that support for Rhinelander, for Rhinelander youth. You don't always tangibly see it, but this is one way you finally do. You finally see a huge project put together with donors and it makes you feel good and makes you feel that being the home of the Hodag is all about."
Both high school hockey programs have already started utilizing the new facilities. Both the Rhinelander High School boys and Rhinelander/Antigo girls teams have new locker rooms, with wide lockers and adjoining bathroom and shower facilties.
"I love the new high school locker room," RHS boys' hockey coach M.J. Laggis said. "We had a kid that's playing college hockey that was at our practice (Friday) and he said, 'Man, I'd kill have this be our locker room where I'm playing.' That tells you something."
"(Players and their parents) can see what it means to be part of the Northern Edge," coach Kevin Sandstrom said. "What our plan is now is to build a culture for success - to have this locker room stay this nice and look this nice and take advantage of the open space and brand new lockers. It's not like their old ones."
Both teams are equally eager to utilize the new weight room, which was nearly complete at the time of Saturday's open house, as well as the new four-station shooting range to work on their shot.
The range replaces an old two-station area in the balcony of the original RIA structure that's no longer able to be utilized.
"We're deficient in our shot as a group," Laggis said. "There are not many pure shooters and that is an opportunity at dryland."
It will go hand-in-hand with Laggis' 12,000 Puck Club, a program that encourages all players at the RIA - from mites to high school players - to work on their shot during the offseason.
"A lot of the complaint has been, 'I don't have a place at home where I can shoot pucks,'" Sandstrom said. "Now we are building this area. We've already begun running dryland in that facility. We've done it twice (last) week already. We'll continue to do it before every practice here in Rhinelander."
When the shooting range is not in use, the nets can go up and the area's transformed into a large space that can be utilized for team exercises.
"There's stride board and different plyo(metric) boxes and stuff," Aylesworth said. "We're going to set those up on the other side of the net there. Some stickhandling, agility things, different stuff like that. We'll actually have four goals in the shooting bay to shoot into. It's just a nice area to do pregame warmups, to do jumping jacks to do jump roping, to do whatever it is to get them warmed up and ready for a game, or to do the off-ice training like the puck shooting."
The Cleary Sports Complex also includes a meeting room for the Rhinelander Figure Skating Club and a warming/changing area at the back of the building that leads to the RIA's outdoor rink.
"It's a great credit to our parents, our people and our rink that we have it," Laggis said.
Aylesworth said the project puts the RIA facility on par with some of the best in the Northwoods.
"We don't have two sheets of ice like Eagle River, but we've got a nice, clean, new, modern facility with some of the best off-ice stuff around and have a nice sheet of ice, too," he said.
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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