Students shoot puck at the Medicine Hat Public School Division's training facility for hockey and ringette. Kevin Kyle/CHAT News

By Jesse Gill

SPORTS

‘An additional space’: Medicine Hat Public School Division opens hockey and ringette training facility

Dec 5, 2024 | 4:59 PM

The Medicine Hat Public School Division opened a training facility as a specialized space utilized for hockey and ringette training in September.

The grand opening of the facility on Maple Avenue Southeast takes place Thursday from 6 p.m. until 7:30 p.m.

Corey Sadlemyer, associate superintendent of learning for the school division, said they wanted take a moment to invite families down to see the facility.

“We’ve got some sponsors that help to fund some of the equipment in here, recognize them, and just celebrate that we are open and using this space,” Sadlemyer said.

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Students in the academy are still on the ice regularly with 36 ice slots throughout the year, in addition to dryland training, and sessions on mental health and strategy as parts of classroom.

Sadlemyer said there are 150 students in Grades 4 to 9 from seven different schools participating in the hockey academy.

“We have Medicine Hat Christian School, Ross Glen, Roy Wilson, Crescent Heights, River Heights, Connaught, and Vincent Massey,” Sadlemyer said.

“We wanted to have an additional space, where kids could do some of that specific hockey and ringette training,” he added.

“This has been really a helpful addition to that. Some of the schools in our program are quite full, so having this extra space has been really helpful.”

Students are using the facility Monday through Friday, with availability to rent out the space through the school division after hours, something already utilized by some of the ringette teams in the city.

Ryker Keetley, a Grade 6 student at River Heights Elementary School, said classwork is involved in the program, but gave some though to what he really enjoys about it.

“Umm…probably like shooting pucks and skating and having fun,” Keetley said.

In addition to the exercise equipment on site, Sadlemyer said there is a lot of shooting and stick handling of pucks that takes place.

“Ken Dzikowski is our program coordinator. Ken’s brought in all sorts of equipment for practicing those things,” Sadlemyer said.

“A variety of kind of low organizational games that they can do in this space as well,” he added.

“This is a great chance to be able to simulate some of those things that you would do on the ice.”

The school division decided to implement the program after surveying families of programming they would like to see.

“Would they like to see more sports-specific activities? Would they like to see more arts, more science?,” Sadlemyer said.

“Out of that, that’s how we ended up with the STEM Academy at Crestwood School and Arts at Ken Sauer School, and then specifically the hockey and the ringette academy here.”

The space gives kids the ability to enjoy hockey during school hours.