Hockey camps kick off the 2014-2015 hockey season

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by Stephen Dafoe

The Town of Morinville, Sturgeon Hockey Club, Morinville Jets and Senior AA Kings are partnering this month to bring a hockey camp to town. The camp, running from Aug. 27 to 29 at the Ray McDonald Sport Centre, promises to get players properly prepared to hit the ice this fall.
Tyler Edworthy, Morinville’s Operations and Program Coordinator, said the camp would cover a variety of aspects, including the fundamentals of hockey, skills development, conditioning, respect in sport, and some dry-land training for one of the groups.

“We ran it [the program] over the long weekend last year and felt there was a lot of camps and tryouts and stuff starting already that weekend,” he said, adding this year they worked with public works to do the event earlier. “Hopefully we will attract some of these players that are going to head off to these camps and try to get some ice time and some conditioning in before it.”

Edworthy said the entire focus of the camp is player development, something he is trying to do across all sports played in the community and across all age groups. The Hockey Camp will be split into two groups this year. Wayne Gatza, Kim Edworthy and players from the Morinvile Junior B Jets and Morinville Senior AA Kings will participate with the two groups: a fundamental camp for six- to 10-year-old players, and a development camp focused on players up to the age of 16.

“We found that there is a real need for people that are still at the beginning levels of development that need to play a bit of catch up, so we don’t want to deter them,” Edworthy said of the first camp.

Dryland training will be an integral part of the older group’s activities geared towards helping them for the season ahead. “The kids that are a little bit more competitive and going to these camps over the long weekend and further on to try-outs, we want to make sure that they get an awesome head start when they go to these camps,” he said, adding the dry-land training will include cardio plus muscle endurance training. “It’s stuff that will directly lead to hockey.

The cost for the program is $60 per player for the fundamentals camp, and $75 per player for the conditioning camp. There will be an hour on ice each day for the fundamentals camp, and 90 minutes of ice time each day for the development camp plus dry-land training.

Needed program

Edworthy sees both programs as being important to local hockey players. “This is the foundation of sport in Morinville,” Edworthy said of hockey. “It’s one of the oldest sports that we’ve ran in Morinville. To develop this one first as kind of a blueprint for others sports moving forward is important in what we are trying to do in developing consistent sport across the board.”

For more information on this summer’s hockey camp, contact Tyler Edworthy at 780-939-7834 or 780-939-7839. Those interested in registering can also do so online through the town of Morinville’s website at Morinville.ca.

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