This is a rundown of what we are offering in the way of summer programs for players and potential players.
Ice time
We have time booked on Wednesday nights at Parade from mid-June to the end of August. I’ve attached a list of the dates and times. As in past summers the hour previous to ours we have sessions with youth players–U10s and U12s–scheduled. The coaches would appreciate any participation by Novas players for these sessions. It’s a great opportunity for our players to put back into the game, help younger players develop and have some fun.
We also have some extra ice time booked towards the end of July at VMIA (also attached to this post). These times are in the late morning on Mondays and Fridays and will allow us to scrimmage other high school teams, have Bob Lundeen work with us on stick-handling and skate a little bit more than we have the past couple of summers. We’ll scrimmage 4 teams in July. These scrimmages will take the place of the tournament in Blaine we’ve played in the last couple of summers. All players from this group will be eligible to play in the scrimmages. We realize not every player can make all the scrimmages and that is fine as it’s a potentially large number of players we’ll be working into the games. The cost per player for the summer ice is $150. You can pay at the first session June 17.
Strength/Conditioning training
This summer we are offering the Washburn strength training program to all of our players–no matter what school you attend. It is a 6-week, 4 day a week, comprehensive training program that includes weight lifting, plyometric workouts, sport specific training as well as leadership training. I’ve attached the brochure Washburn put together with all the appropriate information. This sort of program is an important part of athletic development for players of any sport. Your commitment and dedication to this aspect of development will make a difference in your game. Several of our Washburn players have taken part in this training and have said it was well worthwhile. I hope we can get a lot of players from other schools involved in this program too because it will make you better athletes which will only help our team.
Stick-handling/Dry-land training
Bob Lundeen, longtime coach at the high school and youth levels, has offered to help our players with stick-handling and dry-land training this summer. Bob, a Southwest graduate, would like to work with our players at McRae Park in south Minneapolis on the rink they have set up there year round. Again, this is a great chance for our kids to add puck-handling skills to their hockey toolbox. All of our players would benefit tremendously from this training. Bob would like the sessions to be a fun experience for the kids and has suggested playing music during the workouts and playing roller hockey to end each session. Bob also wants to make sure this training is affordable to our players. He will charge each player $8 per session. We’ll get the schedule out for Bob’s training in the next couple of weeks.
I know many of our players are taking part in other programs and that is fantastic. We’ve designed these programs so as many of our players can participate in several or all of them. We realize there are conflicts and other priorities our kids will have—not in the least just being a kid in the summer. At the same time we want our kids to get together and work on their games and have fun in the process.
If you have any questions about any of this feel free to give me a call. Also, if you know of any players interested in skating with us this summer please feel free to forward this information on to them or put them in touch with me.
Thanks, hope to see you this summer.
John Wareham
Minneapolis Novas Head Coach
651.649.1061
john.wareham@comcast.net
Summer ice schedule:
(to open document - please click on link below and drag it to your desktop)
The ice time we have left is Fri. Feb. 20 – 4:15-6:45 at Parade and Sat. Feb. 21 – 9:00-10:30 at VMIA. I have not heard of anybody planning to skate on Friday so there will be no coaches at that ice time. If any players want to skate on Friday, contact me via e-mail (jwareham@startribune.com) or cell (651.366.2886). Helen Langfeldt has expressed an interest in skating Saturday morning. There will be a coach there if players want to skate Saturday, please let me know. Thanks people.
I want to thank the players and parents for making this season an enjoyable experience. Parents, your kids are terrific people who represented our team and city wonderfully. They’re fun to be around as well. I looked forward to going to the rink every day. Players, your parents couldn’t have been more supportive of you and the program. They were up there in the stands hooting and hollering all season for the Novas in good games and not so good games. Thank you all.
On Wednesday, Feb. 18 we have a couple of things going on:
- At 6:45 p.m. Varsity players need to bring their jerseys to VMIA and have their post-season evaluation. The conversations will be 5-10 minutes.
- At 7:30 p.m. there will be a parent-daughter game which Mark Raderstorf has sent out an e-mail about. It’s for parents and players from both JV and Varsity. It should be a lot of fun and even if your mom or dad isn’t going to skate you should still come and play.
On Monday, January 26 the Novas hosted a clinic for the Minneapolis Park Storm U10 team. Our girls are great role models and they showed it that evening participating in drills and games with young Storm players.
Rumyana Hulmequist - Freshman forward on the Junior Varsity was named Teammate of the Week at Patrick Henry High School for her extracurricular activities. Checkout the story following the link below:
Photos from the outdoor game against St. Paul United have been added to the Flickr feed. You can add your own if you have a Flickr account; just join the Minneapolis Novas group and add them.
This is going out late but I only made the change today. There are two bus pickups for tormorrow’s games vs. SPU at Drake Arena. The JV bus will be at 4:00 p.m. at Washburn. That bus will turn around after dropping off the JV and head back to Washburn to pick up the Varsity at 5:30 p.m. for their game. So, 4:00 JV bus, 5:30 Varsity bus.
Kevin Oxborough has set us up pretty well for Saturday’s outdoor games. They are at Sibley Park at 11:00 a.m. for the JV and 2:30 p.m. for the Varsity. Times are subject to change due to weather. The folks at Sibley are excited to have the games there. They will flood the hockey rink after the JV game, that is why there is such a big time delay between the two games. It sounds like our parents are ready to host the event. We’ll have a hospitality table set up and we have the scorekeepers and timekeepers covered. Several JV players have volunteered to shovel between periods of the Varsity game and some Varsity players have said they’ll do the same for the JV. We’ll need parents ready to shovel as well. I think in the next couple of days we’ll all need to communicate with each other to make sure everything is covered on Saturday. It should be a fun, special day.
You’ll notice the sidebar now has a handful of photos. It’s pulling them off a Flickr group feed and you can add photos yourself by becoming a member of the group. You’ll need to set up a Flickr account, upload your pictures and assign them to the Minneapolis Novas group. The sidebar feed posts just the latest handful of pictures, but if you click on one of them you can navigate to the group pool and see everything that’s been posted.
First off, Saturday’s games @ Champlin Park are 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. The poster schedule has them at 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. We’ll take both teams over – and return – on one bus. We’ll do this a couple of other times this month. Saturday’s bus time is 3:30 p.m.
On Saturday Jan. 17we’re setting up JV and Varsity outdoor games vs. St. Paul United at Sibley Park in South Minneapolis. We’ll try to get the details ironed out in the next week. At this point we’re planning on the JV game starting in the 11:00-noon range and the Varsity game at 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and we’ll have a great day at Sibley.
Tuesday Jan. 20 - JV will play South St. Paul at 4:00 p.m. at VMIA.
Saturday Jan. 24 - games @ Breck are at 3:00p.m. and 5:00 p.m.
Both teams have a lot of games left to play in the season. This second half should be a lot of fun and go pretty quickly. Players need to make sure their schoolwork is taken care of during this busy part of the season. There are several days off on the schedule for both teams–players need to use these as best they can to rest, get away from the game and make sure they attend to their academic responsibilities.
Finally, both teams played some exciting hockey in Austin this past week. Well done ladies, it was fun to be a part of. Thank you for your behavior off the ice too, I think over the years we’ve become favorites of the folks down there and it’s because of the way we have conducted ourselves during games, in the stands, in the hotel and Steve’s Pizza, of course. Thank you to the parents who came down and supported the teams as well.
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You’ll notice the sidebar now has a handful of photos. It’s pulling them off a 
