Core sticks with Warhorse hockey
After this season, the Inland Empire Amateur Hockey Association might want to change its Warhorse nickname.
The Survivors, perhaps?
IEHA once boasted more than 250 players enrolled in a half-dozen divisions with skaters from age 6 to 16, but it has “downsized” this season to just two teams – Squirts (age 9-10) and PeeWee’s (age 11-12) and is just a shadow of its former self.
They may be down, but not at all out.
Last Friday the group staged its annual open skate and general membership meeting at its new home rink at Riverfront Park in downtown Spokane. Made homeless 11 months ago when their home rink at Planet Ice shut down, parents have been scrambling to keep alive not only an organization but a way of life for the many families involved, according to spokesperson Michelle Lewis.
“You don’t realize how good you had it until you lost it, so now we’re working back,” said Lewis. “Thirty-five families … have stuck with us this year.”
Even though IEHA had Riverfront Park lined up for ice, “a lot of parents weren’t quite sure with the plans,” Lewis explained, so they signed kids up with other programs.
While Lewis would like to get those players to return, she said there is no active recruiting program.
“If our guys want to come back, that’s wonderful, but we are not going to scout them out,” Lewis added.
Lewis is also careful to point out that, “We don’t want to step on anyone’s toes,” referring to competing with other area youth hockey associations such as the Spokane American Youth Hockey Association and a new group in Coeur d’Alene.
Inland has been working very hard to get the word out and letting people know “we’re still around,” said Lewis. “It’s been a lot of blood, sweat and tears this year” to keep alive a tradition that goes back a dozen or so years.
IEHA traces its roots back to a small sheet of ice that once filled one of the buildings at the former Walk in the Wild Zoo at Mirabeau Park.
The goal of Friday’s meeting was to not only let players and parents know about IEHA but to allow the group to recruit new board members. Lewis noted that some of the current board members – Terry Marrow, Kathy Dugan and Judy Minderman – don’t have kids in the program but have “given their time to make this work.”
“We worked all through summer to make it happen” and allow the family atmosphere – long a trademark of IEHA – to perpetuate and hopefully be reborn, she said.
Lewis is very passionate about IEHA, what it offers and how it might differ from other groups.
“When you’ve been with this one, you know that it just feels different,” said Lewis, who along with her husband, Ron, lives in Post Falls and has two sons who play hockey.
“We moved from Moscow,” Lewis said. Her kids had a choice where they wanted to play hockey.
“Right away they said, ‘We’re playing for the Warhorses.’ “
While IEHA appears to be popular with some of its players, Lewis sees other sides.
“The families connect well together,” she said. “The whole association listens to any concerns.”
“A lot of parents liked Inland because of the house program,” Lewis said. House teams, unlike rep squads, generally do not travel, so IEHA teams skate and practice on weekends.
“Because it wasn’t during the week, it didn’t interfere with the kids’ homework,” Lewis added.
“This year we’ve established that we had a stable year,” Lewis said. “We’ve had practices every Saturday and Sunday.”
While a new ice rink is planned in Spokane Valley and projected to open in the fall of 2007, it appears unlikely that IEHA would return to its roots. The rink plans to operate its own hockey programs. That means Riverfront Park is projected to be the new home for IEHA hockey for the foreseeable future.
“Riverfront Park had been awesome to work with,” Lewis said. “We started off the season with some concerns,” she said.
Those included boards that were too low, a lack of glass along the sideboards and safety netting that keeps flying pucks contained inside the rink.
But with a $4,000 club donation to upgrade dasher boards with glass and netting, an enthused Lewis proclaimed, “we’ve opened a whole new arena, not just for us but the whole area. Now the bigger kids can play there. The pucks can’t fly off.”
It’s been a good two-way partnership, Lewis said.
“They (Riverfront Park) turned around and did a warm room for us where the kids can get dressed.”
Rebuilding the IEHA program may have started with last Friday’s meeting but Lewis said it will continue with getting the Learn-To-Skate Program going again and, “start getting new kids into the program.”
The goal is to grow the association by two to three teams, she said.