By Jeff D'Andrea

First North Female hockey camp long time in making

Jul 14, 2015 | 5:07 PM

The idea to put on the first North Female Hockey Program Summer Camp August 17-19 in Prince Albert has been in the making for over half a decade.

The idea for this camp actually dates back to 2009, when the Sami-Jo Small visited Prince Albert as the guest speaker for the Special O/Raider Education Fund Power Breakfast. Small actually arrived in the city a little early so some ice time was found and Small skated with some of Prince Albert’s young hockey players.

“It was so successful that the parents had talked about ‘well, we should do something like a summer camp, we should do this because the girls loved it.’ It was sort of put on the backburner because no one stepped up to do it,” said Al Dyer, committee member. “When this last hockey season was done, again the parents were ‘jeez, we should maybe think about do something this summer and a group of decided, well, let’s not think about it anymore, let’s just do it.

“We were fortunate enough to find some ice and very fortunate to get a number of girls that have played pretty good hockey to instruct them.”

This year’s camp will feature Robin Ulrich as the head instructor for the camp. Ulrich has been an assistant coach the University of Saskatchewan Huskies women’s hockey for six years, after playing for the Huskies for another five years.

Learn the signs

How often should you change your brakes?

31m ago

Missing pet

'She means the world to our family': Woman seeks help in finding missing pet parrot

21h ago

BE CAREFUL ON THE ROADS

Semi flips outside P.A.; one of dozens of incidents on Sask. roads due to winter weather

21h ago

The other four instructors are all Prince Albert A&W Bears alumni, featuring Danny Stone who plays on the Calgary Inferno in the CWHL, Chelsey Sundby, Carlee Hrenkiw and Jessica Vance.

Both Sundby and Hrenkiw were on the Bears championship side that won the Saskatchewan Female Midget AAA Hockey League in the 2008-2009 season.

Guest coach appearances will be made by Marc Habscheid of the Prince Albert Raiders and Jeff Willoughby of the Prince Albert A&W Bears.

“It’s really been surprising how positively it’s been accepted,” said Dyer. “There’s been a really positive set of feedback coming from parents and hockey players that are really looking forward to it.”

The camp is available for players anywhere from novice to midget, but organizers will cap the camp at 60 participants, 30 for each group, so every player gets some attention from the instructors.

“We don’t want it to become a hockey factory,” said Dyer. “We want to personalize it as much as possible so that any girl, regardless of ability or regardless of how long they’ve been playing hockey, can come and have a really good, positive experience.”

Registration for the camp is $350, but the camp has an early bird sale on. If players enter by Friday, $50 will be cut off the registration fee.

The camp will go on August 17-19 at the Kinsmen Arena.

More information can be found here.

jdandrea@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @jeff_dandrea