Wednesday, September 6, 2017
Serving the Hub of the North since 1960
Volume 57 • Issue 36
The Rink brings high performance girls’ hockey to the north
NORTH TOO REMOTE FOR BLOOD DONATIONS NEWS - PAGE 2
AIRPORT GETS MONEY FOR PAVING NEWS - PAGE 3 Thompson Citizen photo by Kyle Darbyson Addie Miles (left) and Chelsea Krahenbil (right) prepare for the second day of their training camp at the C.A. Nesbitt Arena on Aug. 29. BY KYLE DARBYSON KYLE@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
THOMPSON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION DONATES TO NRHA NEWS - PAGE 6
Starting Aug. 28, representatives from The Rink, a Winnipegbased training centre, set up a girls’ hockey camp in Thompson. This week-long affair took place at the C.A. Nesbitt Arena and featured an all-female coaching staff that aimed to develop and sharpen the skills of local athletes both on and off the ice. “We pick a skill every morning and every evening, and everything that we do in the morning and the evening correlates with each other,” said Addie Miles, director of female player development for The Rink. “So the girls … they’ll get to see it in the boardroom and be able to visualize it, and then step on the ice and try it themselves.” When the Thompson Citizen caught up with Miles on Tuesday, she said this year’s camp attracted
an enthusiastic group of 11 girls, some of whom even tried out for the midget AAA Norman Wild. “They’re all pretty gung-ho for learning more about hockey, getting in shape,” she said. “We were talking about interval training and were talking about the next level, what you should be playing at AAA … and it was brand-new to them.” While The Rink is primarily based out of Winnipeg, members of their staff travel all over Manitoba and even western Ontario to set up training camps in the service of, in Miles’ words, “letting female hockey players know that there’s something out there specifically for them and for their development.” According to The Rink volunteer Chelsea Krahenbil, this kind of investment in girls’ hockey was desperately needed when she was growing up in Thompson.
“I didn’t really know what hockey was when I was here,” said the 14-year-old. “I didn’t really hear about it or anything.” Since moving to Winnipeg with her family seven years ago, Krahenbil quickly picked up the sport thanks to the influence of her grandfather. Today, she plays for the Assiniboine Park Hockey Association’s female bantam AA Rangers, with her sights set on lacing up her skates for the Balmoral Hall AAA prep team. Krahenbil’s also been volunteering at The Rink for at least the last year-and-a-half, which gives her opportunity to learn the coaching side of the sport from mentor figures like Miles. “We’re very unique in the fact that we have all female coaches,” said Miles. “So just that extra presence of the female coaches I think is huge, especially for somewhere like Thompson.”
However, Krahenbil remarked that, from her perspective, the Hub of the North has stepped up its commitment to hockey programs in general since she’s been gone. She was particularly impressed by the recent renovations done to the C.A. Nesbitt Arena and other facilities within the Vale Regional Community Centre. Even though their training camp offi cially wrapped up on Friday, Miles said The Rink is looking to return to Thompson and other northern communities by establishing a “routine where we come up once a year at a certain time, or twice a year at a certain time.” She later went on to say that their development programs are wide-ranging and flexible, catering to anybody who is willing to put in the work. “We don’t care what you want to learn. You tell us and we kind of help you do it.”
Woman injured with screwdriver in altercation near Thompson bank BY IAN GRAHAM EDITOR@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
FINAL MONTH OF FEDERAL NDP LEADERSHIP RACE NEWS - PAGE 7
A 29-year-old woman was injured with a screwdriver in an altercation near CIBC on Mystery Lake Road on the afternoon of Aug. 24, police say.
The victim, from Hatchet Lake First Nation, got into an altercation with another woman and a screwdriver was pulled out, witnesses told RCMP officers who responded to the call around 4 p.m., resulting in non-life-threatening injuries for the woman, who was taken
to Thompson General Hospital. A 40-year-old woman from Pikwitonei was arrested and charged with assault with a weapon. She was released with an order to appear in court and RCMP continue to investigate.