AAHA 2016-17 Directorship Overviews
2016/17 Goals and Objectives
2016-2107 Goals and Objectives
In bold are the 2016-17 Goals that were identified at the March 2016 Annual Meeting.Below each goal are the action steps taken by the Board to accomplish these goals.
Identify/Recruit Top Level Coaches
- Solicited recent Anoka graduates to consider coaching
- Networked with Blaine, Elk River, Coon Rapids Traveling Directors looking for overflow non-parent coaching candidates
Provide more Coaches Training
- Conducted Pre Season Coaches Meeting
- Conducted Coaches Meeting in November thru Positive Coaching Alliance
Hire Power Skating Instructors
- Hired Troy Riddle to work with Boys
- Hired Mira Jalosuo to work with Girls
Evaluate/Enhance Mite Program
- Added off ice Acceleration training for the upper level mites.
- Implemented power skating instruction with Jeri Joy.
- Increased focus on skill progression and skating
- Better utilization of dry-land facility at all mite levels
Identify Dedicated Goalie Coaches
- Continued partnership with MEGA at their facility and group training for our goalies
- Added MEGA on-ice goalie instructor training
Focus On New Skater Recruitment
- Coordinated Try Hockey for Free in July. We had 92 new participants.
- Coordinated Mini-cyclones program. We had 87 participants.
- Coordinated Spring Cyclones program. We have 35 participants.
- Wrote Grants for Try Hockey for Free and Equipment
- Participated in local Parades – Community advertising about youth hockey
Evaluate Use & Design of Dryland Room
- Coordinated installation of Treadmill
- Removed Rapid Shot machine to create more space for shooting/stickhandling
- Currently working with a professional group to redesign dryland facility
Coordinate Outdoor Ice – Pond Hockey
- Weather did not permit opportunities to pursue this initiative
Mite Program – Brian Pender & Jason Jensen
The 2016-2017 season was another successful one for the Mite program. We had a total of 157 skaters that participated this year, which is up 9 skaters from the previous year’s total of 148. AAHA mite program continues to follow USA Hockey’s American Development Model (ADM). HEP skills were completed on the B and C level mites before and after the hockey season. The Anoka Mite program improved their skills by 10.58%, which is up from 9.02% improvement from the year before. The Anoka Mite program officially began skating on 9/16/16 and officially ended on 3/8/17.
Here is the team and skater breakdown for each level for 2015-2016
Team(s) LevelSkatersIce Appearances (Includes ice before teams were formed)
1 A mites1560
3 B Mites28BW-57, BM-54
6 C Mites68C1-45, C2-45, C3-42, C4-46, C5-47, C6-47
4 D Mites46D1-42, D2-42, D3-42, D4-41
POND HOCKEY HOURS OFFERED: 12
EOY Director/Coordinator Prognosis:
After talking to coaches and parents this season we have come to the conclusion that the players are progressing nicely throughout the first part of the season. Parents/coaches liked the added opportunities for their skaters, such as Acceleration and Power skating work. One common thread however was the lack of and need for practices throughout the months of January and February. Coaches saw an increase in ability that started to plateau or even decline throughout the latter months of the season. Our HEP testing scores, especially for those at the higher level (A/B) struggled to increase their scores. We (coaches/parents/and directors) feel strongly that this is correlated to the lack of practice hours our teams receive in these months. The number of ice appearances went down up to 20 hours from last years numbers. With a growing population of skaters and more teams being formed we have a rising demand for ice time in our program.
I would like to first thank Jason Jensen for his help with the on-ice and off-ice coordination this season. Jason played a crucial role this season as an added position to the Mite Directorship. Jason was brought on board in October as the Mite Coordinator and helped behind the scenes with managers and coaches, as well as with administrative tasks. Jason also helped as a point person on ice for the C and D level mites/coaches.
I would also like to thank the Anoka Mite Jamboree Committee for putting together such a great event.
The Mite Jamboree committee consisted of Brian Pender, Jason Jensen, Michele Roof, Angie Coldren, Amy Erickson, Kristine Wippich, Kristi Nedved, Coleen Dahlmeier, and many other volunteers that helped during this great event.
I would also like to send special thanks to Stephanie Reichow (registration and mite books), Chris Hedlund (ice scheduler), AAIA staff, and the entire AAHA Board of Directors for all their time and effort that they give to our program. A special thank you goes to President Jon Tollette for all his countless hours that he has put into AAHA.
I also would like to thank all the players, parents, managers, and volunteers for all the time and effort that you have put in this year. I especially want to thank all our Mite coaches. Your time and commitment to help our young skaters develop skills and lessons needed for the game is greatly appreciated.
Parents, during the off season encourage your child to shoot pucks, work on stick handling, play in spring /fall leagues, participate in summer camps and anything to further nurture their love of the game. The extra time that they spend working on these skills will only help them develop and build more confidence while on the ice and going into the following year. Please also encourage them to enjoy the off-season and play other sports to also help enhance their personal and all around athletic development.
Hockey is a great sport. Our mite program is fun, affordable, growing and one of the best around. We, as an association, need to get our numbers back up to 180-200 mites ASAP! Parents and players at all levels, we need your help in promoting Anoka Hockey. If anyone has any questions, please contact myself or any AAHA board member.
Again, thanks to everyone who helped out this season and I hope to see you next year at the rink!
Player Development - Kourt Kammann
SUMMER PROGRAM
Starting out the 2016-2017 season was the summer program. Jerrid Reinholz ran this program doing an on ice off ice dryland program which was successful in its first year, we hope to see a greater participation this year.
FALL PRE SKATE
Pre-Tryouts we have on-ice pre-skate for all the kids. We have in the past partnered with Acceleration Northwest on this, however this year we choose to use our AAHA coaches to run the pre-skate. Last year we did not get much “coaching” during these sessions so this year we had the A coaches be responsible for the pre-skates and it went better.
DRYLAND
We brought Acceleration NW into our dryland facility, each team enjoyed 8 sessions of treadmill and dryland time. We got great feedback on the trainers and the program. Looking forward to building on that success this year
POND HOCKEY – END OF SEASON
With ice reserved ahead of time for teams which go to regions and districts we end up with “extra” ice which is made available to the different age levels. Very important to communicate clearly with A level coaches that it is there responsibility to get coaches to the pond hockey.
GOALIES
Partnered again with Mega…. Added on ice training this year. This was liked very much. Not all goalies participating (specifically rogers)
Power Skating
Partnered with Mira Jalouso (co-op) and Troy Riddle (youth) for power skating instruction. Reviews on Mira were very good. Troy had trouble with communications and attendance.
Key focus areas for Player Development for the next year will be:
* More skater skills development
* Pre-Skate Skills focus
* Dryland room utilization in-season
* More stickhandling instruction.
Tryouts – Michael Nagel
The 2016 – 2017 year was another successful year in achieving the AAHA’s tryout mission of “Selecting balanced teams formed with players of similar skill.” Several positive changes were implemented in this year’s tryout process that contributed to the overall success. This could not have been achieved without the support and assistance of the countless volunteers, tryout evaluators, past and present board members, ancillary members, and all the rest of the AAHA community.
This year was the first year the AAHA had the opportunity to host tryouts utilizing TryoutEngine a fully automated, cloud based tryout system. Briefly, this system allowed the association to load in registrations from SportsEngine, track and instantly manage player data (e.g. injuries, player move-up, waive ins, and players not trying out), randomly assign players tryout jerseys and groupings, randomize shift rotations, have judges randomly assigned to evaluate players, suggested players to tryout groupings (A pool, B pool etc.) based on an unbiased natural break algorithm, and ultimately post tryout results immediately after the last session has ended! Based on the tryout evaluators feedback, the elegant and simplistic evaluator user interface allowed tryout evaluators to identify and score players more easily, which allowed for more a more reliable and robust evaluation process. TryoutEngine alleviated the logistical and administrative strain that tryouts inevitably brings for both the tryout administrative staff and for the families involved in the tryout process. Hopefully AAHA will continue to utilize TryoutEngine in the future to ensure the tryout process remains efficient, reliable and unbiased.
Another tryout success was the implementation of mock tryouts for U10 and Squirt players who are new to the tryout process. Mock tryouts succeeded in providing new players and their families an opportunity to gain familiarity with the process with the hopes to ultimately alleviate the stress in participating in an important, unknown process. The mock tryout was used by the association to teach families about the tryout system by explaining the system and
I would like to thank all of the tryout evaluators from this past season for their hard work and diligence. I would also like to thank all the countless volunteers who assisted in making this complicated tryout process smooth and efficient. Thank you Kevin Brynes for helping recruit and direct all of the volunteers. A huge thank you goes out to Mike McCauley for leading the tryout process and overseeing the implementation of the new tryout software. He spent countless hours strategizing, planning, teaching, and directing the process to ensure it was as smooth and efficient as it possible could be. Another thank you goes out to Chris Hedlund for helping coordinate ice availability for both rinks and for his advice in improving the process. Finally, I would like to thank all other board members and other members of the association for their positive support through this process. With the help of all the individuals involved in the tryout process, the association was able to provide a fair, unbiased, and expedited tryout process.
Fundraising – Coleen Mateychuk
One of the goals of AAHA is to keep participation in hockey affordable for all families who would like to participate.
For the 2016-2017 season, we repeated the raffle fundraising as our primary association fundraiser and placed the buyout option at $200. This year, we achieved a profit of $45,943.13 (Total Receipts $62,600 -$14,700 Prizes -$1956.87 Printing) compared to last year of $42,696.25 after all payouts.
Several families chose to take advantage of the opportunity to pick up more calendars to sell to help with ice costs or other hockey fees—AAHA paid $1,000 in fundraising credits to those families that sold extra calendars.
Next year, we plan on continuing with the raffle as the primary mandatory fundraiser. It is our goal to include various ways to offset hockey costs. Any ideas you may have would be welcomed. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please contact the fundraising director on the AAHA website.
Communications – Coleen Mateychuk
I would like to thank AAHA membership for another successful year of hockey. I would also like to send out a special thanks to all the coaches that volunteered many hours on the ice with the skaters.
This year was my first year as Communications Director. Updating the website with the most pertinent information was the main objective. Also, e-mails that needed to send out to the AAHA membership were also routed through the Communication Director.
Communication is very important to making the association run smoothly. If anyone has any suggestions for better communication of information, please feel free to contact the Communication Director.
Volunteers—Kevin Byrnes
This is my 4th year of being the volunteer coordinator During this past year we saw great support from our members.
Because of this support we were able to keep the required volunteer hours to 10 per family. These 10 hours could be credited toward any association event such as tryouts, tournaments, registration, mite jamboree, SKATE Program, and other miscellaneous needs. Because of your tremendous support we are able to keep that number manageable.
As in years past, teams that were participating in an Anoka Tournaments were required to volunteer 25 hours toward their particular tournament. In exchange for the 25 hours, tournament fees were reimbursed. I highly recommend that this policy is continued into the future as it helped ensure that we had adequate volunteer coverage for each tournament.
Our members donated almost 2000 hours of their time throughout the year to association, this does not include regular season game responsibilities (time clock, books and penalty box) nor does it include the time that our coaches and team managers put in. Many thanks to those folks as they are the ones that teach our kids and keep us parents organized.
I would like to thank all the members who volunteered their time throughout the year. It was a real pleasure meeting many of you.
Recruitment and Retention – Deanna Hanks
Recruitment is a primary focus for AAHA. In addition to the strategies used in previous years, new strategies were implemented to varying degrees of success to get the word out about Anoka hockey.
One of our biggest successes was our Try Hockey For Free sessions offered in July.The cost of this program was paid for through a grant. Many of these skaters continued on to our Mini-Cyclone and/or Mite program. We had over 80 registered skaters for our Mini-Cyclone program and handed out 50+ sets of equipment. We also received equipment from Total Hockey through a grant. I would like to thank Rob Savini for being the on-ice coordinator for our Mini-Cyclone program.
2016-2017 Recruitment strategies:
Recruitment StrategiesRecommendation
-Yard signs throughout AR community continue
-Strategically placed banners in high traffic areas continue
-Free registration to first year mites continue
-Free equipment package to first year mites
And Mini-Cyclones ($100 deposit) continue
-Free Mini-Cyclone program for beginning skaters continue
-Applied for grants for more equipment continue
-Try Hockey For Free Fliers distributed to schools in March continue
-Try Hockey For Free sessions in July continue
-Try Hockey For Free session in November continue
-2 and 2 Challenge continue
-Spring Mini-Cyclone Powerskating continue
Girls Traveling Director - Jon Klocker
The Co-op with Rogers was very successful this year. We learned a lot as a Co-op committee and will look to make next year a more improved experience for everyone. I would like to thank the coaches, managers, parents and lastly the players for their dedication and commitment to making each team a successful one. Each one of our 7 teams qualified for the district tournament.
Below is a list of our teams that advanced to the District Tournament with their league finish (in parenthesis) and tournament finishes:
U15B (1st)-1st Place in districts, 1st Place in Regions, 1st in State!!
U12A (2nd)-2nd Place in districts, Lost to Andover in Championship, 2nd in Regions, 4th place finish in State.
U12B White (2nd)- Lost both district games.
U12B Black (5th)-Lost both district games.
U10A (4th)-Won consolation championship
U10B Maroon (5th)-2nd Place in districts, Lost 1-0 in overtime to Andover in championship, Won the Consolation Championship in Tournament of Champions
U10B Blue (8th)-won 2 district games. Lost 2-1 in shootout to Anoka/Rogers Maroon in semi-final game.
Anoka Classic Tournament Director – Katie LangThis past year,ourassociationhosted three Anoka Classic tournaments: Girls U10and U12 A & B (32 teams), PeeWee AA-A, B1, and B2 (32 teams), and Bantam AA-A, B1, and B2 (24 teams). Each tournament was well represented by our Anoka teams and included many otherteams throughout thestatethat had future success at the district, region, and state tournament levels. The Anoka Classic tournaments are successful due to the hundreds of volunteer hours that our association membersfill every year. I want to thank all those in the association,including theother members of the board, who volunteered their time to make our tournaments an enjoyable experience for all the youth hockey players that participated. Iwould alsolike to thank each of the following for their continuedinvolvement and support during each our tournament weekends: the Anoka coaches,managers,and parents; Kim Brotkowski, Bob Erickson and the entire AAIA staff; District 10/Tom Nergard , First Choice Medical (EMTs), Hat Trick Hockey, Tornado Alley, Mandi Ellingson (mitten lady), Violet Victoria Jewelry, Sterling Trophy and Do All Printing.