April 19, 2021 at 12:32 p.m.
The Northern Wisconsin Knights are taking the rink at the Rhinelander Ice Arena with a novel concept - a true emphasis on skill development over competition at the youth level.
There are no games scheduled, or even scrimmages against other teams. There's a chance that might happen this year, or even next. But, for now, the program is two practices a week for two months for players at the mite (U8), squirt (U10), peewee (U12) and bantam (U14) levels.
"This is really focused more on just the development of playing the game, not tournament-focused, not game-focused," said Randy Ostrom, a Rhinelander Ice Association youth hockey coach and hockey development coordinator for the Knights program. "This is just to really drive individual skill development and garner hockey sense in skill development with these kids."
According to Ostrom, the program, which held its first practices last week, began with an idea one night over dinner with Jim and Katie Kennedy.
"We were having dinner one night, talking about spring hockey stuff in Rhinelander," he said. "I kind of just had this idea, 'Well, why don't we do it? Why don't we just do it?' They looked at me like, 'What do you mean?'
"I started asking around a little bit and just kind of garnered interest from families that were already in the program to see what the general interest would be in Rhinelander and I found out real quickly that there was a lot more of an interest for it than anybody had really thought."
The Ostrom and Kennedy families are spearheading the program, with an assist from the RIA. Initially, the plans were to kick off the program in 2022, but the interest among area hockey families and support from the RIA's facilities board allowed everything to come together a year sooner than anticipated.
"To bring spring hockey back to Rhinelander, even at a developmental level, is a huge step for our area and our program," Ostrom said.
Brett Aylesworth, rink manager at the RIA, said an increase in participation at the youth level this year despite the COVID-19 pandemic made it the perfect time to welcome in the program.
"It's not something we'd normally do but, in a year like this, it's like, 'let's take the risk and see,'" he said. "These kids are still looking for stuff to do. Some of these sports are still not going to operate normal. We have proven that we can do it safely."
The RIA added support by hosting registration for the program on its website. Ostrom said he was looking at a threshold of 35 kids to make the program viable for this season. The response ended up nearly double that number.
"Before you knew it, we had 64 kids signed up," he said. "To be where we're at and have the numbers that we have now, to me, that's just awesome for the hockey community here in the area."
The program has certainly had buy-in from those within the hockey community. Rhinelander High School boys' hockey coach M.J. Laggis is pitching in down at the mite level. A number of other RIA youth coaches and Rhinelander hockey alumni are helping out with the Knights this spring.
"We've got a good mix of a lot of different experience levels and some guys that have played some higher-level hockey," Ostrom said. "We're going to use everything they learned at the higher levels to bring it back down to the youth level and drive our youth level.
"Getting M.J. to come down and work with the younger kids is going to be awesome, coming off of his success as a high school coach this year. The whole program looks up to the high school program. If we can get those kids to buy in and look at M.J. the way the high school kids look at M.J., we should be able to keep hockey going strong here in Rhinelander."
Focusing on player development over competition has a couple of advantages. For starters, it's a more economical option for those looking to extend their hockey seasons and, because there are not any competitions, there is no need for team tryouts. That means no skaters were turned away based on ability.
"The games aren't what it's about. It's about the practices," Aylesworth said. "Less fees because they don't go to tournaments ... The goal is to run some higher-level practices, not worry about the games or anything else. It will be almost all skill development."
That, Ostrom said, is a fundamental difference from even the winter hockey season for most youth players.
"In a normal hockey season, we always start late October, (early) November and generally you get your team and you've got to start putting the team together, and you've got to figure out how these 15-20 kids a team, and make them go play games," he said. "You're practicing for the weekend at that point. Here, we're not practicing for the weekend. We're practicing for just overall development and to watch these kids get better, and to watch their skill development grow."
The RIA benefits from the program as well. In a normal year, ice would have gone out at the facility last week following the conclusion of the figure skating season. Now, ice will remain in through the second week of June. The Rhinelander Figure Skating Club is taking advantage with training a couple of nights of a week, while the RHS and Northern Edge high school programs see some benefit as well, between the 3 on 3 hockey league that will run on Sundays through May 9, and the high school development camp that will take place on Wednesdays through the end of May.
"That group is basically going to raise enough to pay the bills and then all of our other stuff we're able to do is going to bring in a little extra revenue," Aylesworth said.
There's also optimism that the program will bolster hockey in Rhinelander at a time where momentum is high following the RHS boys' hockey team's share of the Great Northern Conference championship and advancement to the sectional final round of the WIAA Division 2 tournament.
"The more and more kids we get into the program, if we can really garner that passion for the sport at a young age, then that just continues to support the Rhinelander Ice Association and our hockey program as a whole," Ostrom said.
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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