November 19, 2010

By Mike Scandura
Special to USAHockey.com

Even though the Charlotte Junior Checkers are located in an area that’s the heart of not only basketball but also NASCAR, they’ve had a major impact on the youth hockey scene in just their second year of existence.

“Even minor league baseball (the International League’s Charlotte Knights) has received more publicity than hockey and they play in (Fort Mill) South Carolina,” said Checkers director of hockey operations Joe Cardarelli. “Now, because there’s an AHL franchise here (the Charlotte Checkers), there’s more in the local news and more of a feeling that this is big-time hockey.

“We absolutely believe this will help us. For example, our 8-and-under program keeps growing. That’s where you want growth and that’s where we’ve had it.”

With a solid foundation in that age group, the Junior Checkers have 318 boys registered for this season.

The Junior Checkers’ Squirt A and AA, Peewee A and AA, Bantam AA, Midget U-16 AA and Midget 18-U AA are travel teams that play in the Carolina Hockey League. House Division teams compete in the Charlotte Metro Hockey League.

“What we did this year is add steps to our program,” Cardarelli said. “Since the Metro League is completely in-house, the kids are on the ice twice a week. The Peewee Select Team is picked from those kids so they get a taste of travel over the course of the season.

“The A teams practice twice a week and our AA teams practice three times a week. But we’ve done some things in order to follow American Development Model principles. The first six Tuesdays of the season were devoted to performance training. We kept all the travel kids on the ice working different stations and playing small-area games. This enabled us to keep them all active.

“We wanted to make sure every kid was getting good skill work, like puck control and shooting,” Cardarelli continued, “for the tactics they would learn in their regular team practices.”

Another major component utilized by the Junior Checkers is the 5 Star Development Program, which is run by the Extreme Ice Center in Indian Trail.

“With the convenience of our Puddle rink, we keep our practices small with a maximum of eight kids ages 6-and-under and two coaches,” Cardarelli said. “They are professional coaches … not just dads volunteering. They’re college or former college players and guys with practical experience who are specifically taught how to coach 6-year-old kids.”

The 5-Star Program consists of the following:

Star 1: Learn to Skate / Snow Buddies.

Star 2: Skates and Sticks, which involves glide turns, stopping, backward stance, stationary puck handling, carrying the puck, stationary forward sweep pass and receiving a pass.

Star 3: Comets, with an emphasis on lateral skating movement, acceleration, two-foot stops, crossovers, tight turns and forehand plus backhand sweep shot.

Star 4: Aces, which involves advanced skating with emphasis on crossover forward start, tight turns with pucks, stopping with the puck and backward-to-forward pivots.

Star 5: Tykes (ages 5 to 7), which involves combining skating and stick skills with games to reinforce hockey concepts and with instruction in lateral movement with the puck, fakes, dekes and scoring.

“This is the key to our system,” Cardarelli said. “With the Tykes, we’re getting them ready to graduate to our Mite cross-ice program. Tykes is an opportunity to get them on the ice twice a week, like Mites, and use some of the same practice drills so they know what to expect.

“The big thing we look at is our retention rate. From our 5 Star Program, 95 percent of the kids who start the six-week program have come back. We must be doing something right because they’re coming back.

“In the summer of 2009 before we started this, we had 32 kids total in our 8-and-under program and only three coaches,” Cardarelli said. “Now, we have 85 kids and 18 coaches. We’re trying to lower the number of players for each coach and follow ADM principles while trying to get as many kids out on the ice as possible.”

Even though the Junior Checkers are essentially still in the neophyte stage, they do have significant objectives.

“Our team objectives are to represent North Carolina in national tournaments,” Cardarelli said. “Our individual player objectives are, through the USA Hockey tryout process, to qualify kids for the Southeast Player Development Festival.”

If numbers are any indication, they’re well on their way to those goals.

Story courtesy of Red Line Editorial, Inc.