South Sask Hockey Academy soldiering along through first season

If everything had gone according to plan for the South Sask Hockey Academy (SSA) in their inaugural season, their players would have found themselves going through a unique hockey experience.

Not only would their crew of Under-11 and under Under-9 players have seen a ton of ice time and focused practices, they would also have taken the ice in tournaments in neighbouring province and the United States, gaining more and more exposure to the game at a young age.

Unfortunately, the pandemic put all of that on hold. But it didn’t stop the SSA — an unsanctioned academy program developed by coaches Dayle Wilcox and Evan Schwabe — from putting their charges through their paces, developing their skills through regular practices and plenty of on-ice skill-focused drills.

That went even further in-depth when the provincial government instituted the current public health order limiting teams to eight players and two coaches on the ice at any one time.

“It took a little bit of juggling to adapt to it, but we’ve been able to keep everyone involved since then,” said Wilcox, who came up with the idea for the SSA a couple of years ago, modelling it after similar programs in Alberta and the Prairie Hockey Academy in Caronport. “It’s been a challenge sometimes with certain aspects of it, but we still have all the kids out there and they’re all working hard.”

In fact, having only eight players out there has helped when it comes to skill development, with many of their youngsters improving in leaps and bounds.

“We’ve seen a lot of individual skill and skating development, just because of the numbers,” Wilcox explained. “We used to be two coaches for 14, 15 kids, now we’re two coaches for eight kids. So there’s a little bit of a positive for that, the kids are seeing some pretty good development.

“They’re missing the games and things like that, but with the cards we were dealt and everything that’s happened, we’re really happy with how they’ve managed to stick with it and keep at it.”

All told, the academy has 56 kids for their inaugural season, with the SSA able to use their ice time efficiently enough to spread out practice sessions and balance ice time.

The program has already been planning for the future, too — the aforementioned tournaments might not have happened this year, but it’s expected things will be in full gear next fall. And that has preparations for the 2021-22 season already moving forward.

“We’re looking at doing some ID skates and tryout skates sometime in the springtime, just to get a rough idea for a number for what we’re going to have next year, that’s going to give us a bit of a head start compared to last year,” Wilcox said. “We didn’t get started until July, August, so we’ll have a  better idea of where we’re at and whether we need more or to stay the same.”

And if prospective players are concerned about a lack of league competition…

“I think a lot of people think we’re on an island here and don’t have anyone to play, but that’s not really the case,” Wilcox said. “It might not be a normal league, but a lot of these private type programs are looking for options also so we’d have no problem getting games here.”

As an example the Hockey Super League in Alberta is a program that isn’t sanctioned by Hockey Alberta or Hockey Canada and partially owned by Warriors legend Ryan Smyth. The Super League has grown into an 80-team behemoth covering over 1,000 players ranging in age from the 2004 to 2011 groups.

“This year if we were able to travel into Alberta, we would have been heading that way for the odd showcase, there was a lot of interest out of there and a few places in the States that would have been coming this way to play us too,” Wilcox said. 

“And we wouldn’t be travelling four or five hours for one game, it would be an exhibition series or a full tournament, so if you lump all your games together, everything in between is development time and practice time and that can be really rewarding.”

Through it all, the SSA has received plenty of positive feedback and the potential for further growth is most certainly there.

“So we’d like to get the word out and show there’s another option for parents out there,” Wilcox said.

For more information on the South Sask Hockey Academy, be sure to check out their website at www.southsaskacademy.ca.