Impact Hockey Camp Provides Unforgettable Lessons

To his amazement, Neil Huotari hasn’t had trouble waking up his 6-year-old son, Zach, on Wednesday mornings this fall. Zach, signed up for Impact Hockey Camp’s Sunrise Skate mite session, beats his dad to the punch.

“Every morning he gets up, goes to the bathroom and gets dressed,” Neil Huotari said, smiling. “It’s really cool, because I don’t push him. I say if you don’t want to go, you don’t have to.”

But like the others at Impact’s camps throughout the year, wanting to go is never in question.

Run by Minnetonka girls hockey coach Eric Johnson and fellow instructors Adam Kragthorpe and Dave Rogalski, Impact helps hockey players from mites to college learn and refine their skating, stickhandling and control on the ice.

The camp, which opened in 2004 and has taught NHL Draft picks like Nick Leddy and Jake Gardiner, uses a low instructor-to-player ratio, works on helping each player improve throughout each camp.

The next session runs 10 weeks from Jan. 4-March 9 at Pagel Activity Center. For those who sign up for one Impact camp, odds are they will do it again.

“I’ve done it for four years, and I just like it because the coaches are right there helping you,” said Bennett Hawley, an 11-year-old PeeWee. “When you make a mistake, they are there helping you with what you did wrong. You’re out there with other great hockey players that can help you grow as a player.”

The key, from the Impact coaches' standpoint, is continuing to challenge the players without pushing them too far. Johnson said by using drills that are slightly out of a particular age group’s skill level, the kids keep their focus, assess the challenge and continue to work until they master a given skill.

“They’ll motivate themselves, basically,” Kragthorpe said. “Challenge themselves, and when they’re done, you’ll give them a good holler and say, ‘Good job, Jack.’ They’ll kind of light up once in a while to know they’ve figured something out.”

Those bits of encouragement stay with the athletes, both when they play competitively and when they return home after camp.

Huotari hears it all the time.

“The stories (Zach) tells aren’t always about hockey,” Huotari said. “It’s about getting carried out with a goal or something cool the coaches do. Coaches make everything, especially at a young age.”

The Impact camp works on forwards and defensemen’s skills, but Johnson said the program also prides itself on its goalie training. Rogalski is in charge of the netminders, and he generally works one-on-one with a pair of goalies at a time during the Sunrise Skates.

PeeWee Ben Shepard, 11, has seen the difference in his game since spending two or three years working at Impact.

The variety of skills learned is simply too wide to pinpoint.

“He’s taught me everything,” Shepard said.

Each athlete takes something different away from the camp. Mitchell Terrell, a 13-year-old Bantam, improved his stickhandling and puck flipping. Dylan Heiam, a 12-year-old PeeWee, enjoys the different focuses each session.

But the excitement and the challenge Impact provides its athletes is what makes many of these athletes return again and again.

“I think of it as I just helped another kid put another drill bit into his tool box,” Kragthorpe said. “He’s got one more thing he can bring out during a game. He might not use it as a vanilla skill that he uses every game, but he brings it out and says I learned this with Adam or EJ at Impact.”