If you have watched a hockey game at almost any level, you will notice the skating ability of the players.
But they all had to learn how to skate somewhere. In Annandale, many youngsters get their start on the outdoor rink at the corner of Pleasant Avenue and Park Street, as part of the Rink Rat Hockey program.
Put on by the Annandale-Maple Lake Community Education program, Rink Rat Hockey is the introduction to both the sport and to ice skating. It is for kids from ages 3 to 8, boys and girls who have never played organized hockey.
And while hockey provides the framework for the sessions – which are held on five Saturday mornings and five Tuesday evenings in January and early February – it is not the goal for everyone who participates.
"It’s Minnesota, and parents want their kids to learn how to skate, whether or not they’re going to move into hockey. It’s not necessarily about that," Tiffany Grube, Community Ed director, said.
She said that skating can become a lifelong activity, like riding a bike. While the rink rat program is designed to help spark an interest in hockey, it also gives those who aren’t inclined to advance into formal youth programs an opportunity at a young age to get a taste of hockey, and find out it if it is for them.
Jim Splinter, who has been coaching rink rats for a handful of years now, said the program is an ideal way to gauge the level of interest in hockey before making the commitment to play organized hockey.
For kids in Annandale, which doesn’t field a hockey team on its own, that commitment is even greater. Annandale has partnered with Monticello and Maple Lake for boys hockey, and Monticello and St. Michael-Albertville for girls hockey. This past year, Buffalo became the hockey partner.
It has meant that parents are signing up their young kid and taking them back and forth to another town all winter long, not knowing if the child is going to enjoy it. That’s a big step, and through the rink rats program both the parents and the kids are able to get a better handle on that.
"My goal isn’t that we’re going to make hockey players," Splinter said. "We’re going to teach the kids to skate."
That’s a tall task, considering the learning curve that is at play.
"When we started, most of them could not skate at all," he said of the first session Jan. 9. "At the beginning they couldn’t even stand up at all. After the first hour, we had most of them up and walking."
It doesn’t take long before most are skating like they have been doing it awhile, and eventually most – Splinter estimated four out of five kids – wind up joining youth hockey.
Nothing could please him more, because Splinter has a lifelong love of hockey, and the sport that grabbed him as a youngster has never let go.
Started young
He guesses that he first started playing at the age of 3, and grew up playing pond hockey, which might be one reason he so enjoys these outdoor sessions each winter.
Splinter’s father coached him and his brother in youth hockey, and he went on to play for Bloomington Jefferson High School. Back in 1972 when he graduated, there weren’t any girls hockey teams. Fortunately that has changed, and there are girls as well as boys learning the game now.
Splinter, who by day is a Realtor with Edina Realty, has coached hockey with the programs here and in Monticello, Maple Lake and Willmar for the better part of two decades.
"Even before my son Patrick was born, I was coaching hockey, and trying to give back to the community, because I had this love for doing it," he said.
About five years ago he hadn’t been coaching but got a call from Chad Arvola.
"He said, ‘We don’t have any Annandale-Maple Lake kids on the squirt team anymore,’" Splinter said, connecting the dots between a lack of outdoor ice here with the absence of local kids making it to the higher levels of youth hockey.
As proof, Splinter said that all six of the Annandale kids on the Squirt A team had participated in rink rats.
"It has been successful," he said.
The rink rats had 16 kids that first year, he said, and now they are up to 36 kids. He gets a kick out of it when past rink rats show up for the outdoor practices to help coach the young kids.
Joining him as coaches are his son Patrick and Tab Ashwill.
"I get a lot of benefit for having Patrick out there with me too," Splinter said. "In fact, I couldn’t do it without him."
Those father-son bonds were strengthened over hockey when they joined efforts to coach the Squirt C team eight years ago.
"We had an unbelievable season," he said. But the payoff has come all these years later, when six of those kids are on the Monticello-Maple Lake Moose varsity squad.
Splinter said he still attends about half of those varsity games as well as some games in Buffalo, and he has season tickets for men’s hockey at St. Cloud State University. He is able to do that because coaching Rink Rats Hockey, instead of youth hockey, for example, has allowed him the time.
"I am kind of a puckhead. I’ve got a real passion for watching it," he said.
That enjoyment is easy to spot, no matter the age of the kids.
"I think anybody that watches me out there with the kids can see how much I’m enjoying it, and the kids are, too," Splinter said.
"Jim has been really dedicated to the rink rats program, and he recruits good people to help him who have a passion for hockey, too," said Tiffany Grube, Community Education director.
That passion has made converts of a lot of people. Splinter has touched so many kids’ lives, and he is consistently reminded of it.
"I very seldom can go to a hockey game and when I’m standing with parents I know really well, that I don’t have four or five kids walking up to me and pulling on my jacket and saying, ‘Hi, coach,’" Splinter said. "And no matter what sport you coach, there’s probably nothing that makes you feel better than when they are saying, ‘Hi, coach.’"