Joe Drennan
Sports Editor

For the past 12 seasons the Forest Lake High School boys hockey team has spent their summers at the FLHS gym working out to prepare for the upcoming season. This season is no different as boys track and field head coach Paul Kendrick led the players through rigorous exercises that should make them better athletes for the new season.

Kendrick may be the track and field coach, but he knows a thing or two about hockey too. Kendrick helped coach his son, senior forward Dustin, through the youth levels and was named the new FLHS girls coach.

Helping Kendrick out is John Fick, father of state champion nordic skier Ben Fick and junior high hockey player Tom.

The players meet at the high school three days a week for six weeks this summer, taking a week off for the Fourth of July holiday. One day Kendrick and Fick would have them running different sprints to help improve their speed.

ìWe would have them doing different ballistic sprints to help them not only with their speed but with their explosive starts,î Kendrick said.

The players also jumped boxes to help build up the strength in their legs and improve their starts. On occasion the players would wear weighted vests to make the drills a bit harder.

Another day Kendrick and Fick would have the players working on their overall power. When working on power, the players slowly increased their reps and the intensity at which they did them until they were maxing out at the end of the six week session.

Part of the power training included slide boards that also helped the players with their skating stride, Russian boxes where they jumped back and forth on to angled landings and squats with the weighted vests on.

ìThe slide boards have really been huge,î Kendrick said. ìThe boys really notice the improvement on the ice.î

The third day of dry land the players worked on their overall conditioning.

Every day of the dry land training the players spent some time on their stickhandling as well. Kendrick and Fick had the players doing different stationary drills just to work on the quickness of their hands to stickhandling drills that had the players going through obstacles to work on puck control.

ìThese kids are going to be ready for the season,î Kendrick said.

On ice

The hockey team hasnít spent their whole summer in the gym. The players spend an hour and a half on the ice three times a week at the Schwanís Super Rink in Blaine where former boys coach and newly named assistant girls coach Dan Forsyth and his son Aaron ran the summer practices.

While it would have been easy to go over the different systems the high school team runs, Dan and Aaron focused on the little things. The Forsythís had practice plans that had the players working on their individual skills, starting practices with skating drills, moving on to shooting drills, then some sort of game to end the practice to make sure everybody was having fun.

The coaching staff also recognized that the summer time is a time when families take extended vacations or some kids play baseball. With that knowledge, the coaches encouraged the players to go on vacation with their families and not to worry if they had to miss a skate or dry land session because of baseball.

ìThe coaches in all the sports at the high school are very understanding of things like that,î Kendrick said. ìWe also realize these kids are teenagers and need to have a life outside of sports.î

Girls

After being named coach of the girls hockey team, Kendrick quickly got on the phone to find some open ice this summer and get a girls summer training program started.

Working with limited time to organize things, Kendrick was able to get the girls on the ice twice a week at the Chisago Lakes Arena and in the gym one day a week.

ìEven with this little bit weíll be better prepared for the season,î Kendrick said.

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Forest Lake Times
P.O. Box 218
880 SW 15 St.
Forest Lake, MN 55025
651-464-4601
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