YAKIMA, Wash.– Seattle Kraken youth coaches teamed up with local youth coaches today for a free hockey day.
“It was an intro to hockey, to skating, and just an awesome experience you could see it in the kids’ faces the excitement, and as well the parents hovering over the boards, I think it just, it went really well,” Josh Mizerek, the Junior 18U Triple-A coach for the Seattle Kraken.
Many kids in the valley got the chance to try hockey with Yakima youth and Seattle Kraken youth coaches.
Kids got to learn how to skate, fall, get on to the ice, slow down, and get the opportunity to shoot pucks.
“The introduction of getting players into the game and especially, as young as they are, that’s so rewarding,” Mizerek said.
I asked Kristina Coppock, the president of The Rink Foundation why they wanted to do this event.
“Well hockey is growing, and our programs are growing but a lot of people still don’t know about us so it’s a really good way for parents to get kids interested and for kids to get to try it out before they, buy it so to speak and just gives them a fun little glimpse of hockey.”
This is what the event means to both the Kraken and The Rink Foundation.
“For us it’s great in terms out an outreach,” Mizerek said. “For us to reach out to our fanbase but also to align and work together with youth programs, is really beneficial for all.”
“Having growth of our programs is kind of where it’s at for us in Yakima we’re really trying to focus on program growth, we’re also trying to focus on saving our current ice rink facility as well as funding a new ice rink facility,” Coppock said. “Our current ice rink facility is currently being sold, but eventually we would like to have a full-size sheet here in Yakima.”
Right now, The Rink Foundation is still searching for a new ice facility.
“We are full-on into fundraising, we’ve got tentative plans we don’t have a current, settled-on piece of property yet,” Coppock said. “That’s kind of our goal for first quarter/second quarter of next year is hopefully narrowing that down and then finalizing those plans so we can go forward.”
The Rink Foundation hopes to host another fundraising event, but Coppock said it wouldn’t happen until the area of march due to the difficulty of coordinating around hockey. This is what they’re hoping for with a new facility.
“A new venue would allow us a full sheet of ice that’s our main objective, because we’d really like our teams to be more competitive,” she said. “Right now, our teams don’t get to get on the ice until about six to eight weeks after, most other programs. So that puts us at a competitive disadvantage.”
Right now, the current ice rink in Yakima does not have a full sheet of ice.
“We have a three-quarter sheet so, if you are above the age of 10U it gets really crowded out there,” she said. “A full sheet would be really ideal, and then having the ability to have ice all year-round really would just help with our training, and our ability to be able to offer more sessions, more skills camps, that kind of thing.”
The Rink Foundation said the entire project costs roughly $10-15 million, so far, they’ve obtained about $20,000 since efforts started increasing in March.