Ice hockey camps are huge success
IT’S been a busy month for kids at North Ayrshire Wild as the local ice hockey club held their popular summer caps.
And the club had the pleasure of welcoming back former player Dayle ‘Keeno’ Keen to front the summer programme of skills development for the next generation of players at the club.
Keeno started with the club back in the Magnum as a junior and played his way through to under-19s before moving on from the club.
Fast forward 15 years and Keeno is now a highly successful coach, working with Elite League team Coventry Blaze, along with coaching within the Great Britain under-20 programme.
The cub found out that Keeno was going to be home for some time in the summer and they quickly made him an offer to run a hockey camp.
Running out of KA Leisure’s Auchenharvie ice rink, 35 children – mostly from the Wild, but some travelling in from Fife, Lanarkshire and Belfast – were put through their paces in a challenging five-day schedule.
Kilmarnock-based physical trainer Katie Stanley helped put the players through an off-ice programme, working on agility and coordination, while Keeno ran the 17-hour on-ice programme assisted by the club’s talented U16 and U19 players.
Keeno worked with the players on improving their fundamental ice hockey skills through innovative planning and constructive video sessions.
The delighted returning player commented: “It was great to be back helping at the club where it all started for me.
“The week has been great fun and the players have shown excellent commitment and improvement across the camp.”
And while the camps were a huge success, there were a number of moving parts away from the rink which made it all possible.
The club moved to thank all those responsible for a great few days of action – including a number of local businesses.
A North Ayrshire Wild spokesperson said: “The club would like to thank Ruby, the community manager from Asda in Irvine, Tom, manager of Morrisons Stevenston, Lidl Stevenston and Premier Stores in Girdle Toll and Bourtreehill in Irvine, for supplying a variety of food, fruit and water to help support the breakfast initiative that also ran across the week.”
Now, the Wild Ice Hockey Club are getting ready to start back after the summer break, with training due to start in the first week of August.
If anyone is interested in playing ice hockey, the club has a fantastic ‘Learn-To-Play’ programme with equipment available to new players and can be reached via email on naihcltp@gmail.com for further information.