Hello and welcome to the 25-26 season of SCYIHA!

The board changed over June 9th and while I've wanted to say hello, getting programming launched and organized the higher priority, which I am happy to announce that both Wild and Icers teams are now active on sports engine. My name is Bryan Ollendyke, I am an empathetic polymath, a web developer / build software, teach at Penn State, seek the best solutions from the best people, mentor, joke, love developing hockey players and am madly in love with my wife Dana, who is my best friend and supports me in my hockey craziness as she has since we met at Penn State 20 years ago. We have two sons, our oldest son played in the organization for the last 5 years and my youngest is on 12U White, and we love hockey! There isn't a day that goes by where NHL Network isn't on at home, yes even now when it's just highlights of the recent amazing Stanley cup rematch!

At 41, I still shoot on our backyard rink regularly, but I fell in love with hockey in 1990 when the Penguins won their first Stanley cup and suddenly me and all of my friends in the neighborhood played daily. I regularly played 20 hours a week with friends at the roller hockey rink by our house that we advocated to local government to build and used daily there after. Due to financial hardship, we never could afford hockey beyond house league as a youth, and when I eventually tried to get back into it in high school it was too late. Without structure but with a lot of desire, local opponents and unlimited free rink time, I dreamed of playing for Penn State and scoring the game winning goal, so I practiced daily from 16 - 18 in high school; to win a national championship in roller hockey. I played Penn State Roller Hockey for 5 years in college and coached them to their 1st and only national championship in 2010. I've been a SCYIHA head, assistant, and guest coach for many teams the last 3 years across 10U, 12U and 14U and hope to continue coaching after my boys exit programming. I still play hockey regularly with my oldest son and his friends in Nittany Hockey League.

To those that voted for me, thank you for your encouragement to run and step into this role. It is a lot of work, but already early on fulfilling to see so many people step up to lighten the load. To those that don't know me yet, I look forward to meeting at the rink and representing your players interests while earning your trust. I hope to bring a holistic athletic development mentality association wide, as I have on the teams I've coached the last few seasons. Here's a bit about me and my priorities for our hockey family.

My priorities for your kids

That we seek to create exceptional human beings, who love their team, teammates, coaches, and the great game of hockey.

That we work together to create a culture and atmosphere that is fun, engaging, developmentally appropriate, safe and challenging for as many levels of play as we can support.

That your kids establish goals and we help provide pathways to those goals, recognizing that not all goals can be satisfied here (and that's ok!). Some kids want to score a goal or fall down less this year, others want to win PAHL banners or play in the NHL. No dream is too big or too small when the individual seeks to chase it. We can provide training and environment, they have to put in the work here and beyond our programming to chase those bigger dreams. To accommodate big and small, we must create a culture that fosters growth and development of dreams regardless of scale, for all our athletes, to the best of our ability.

My priorities for our association programming to build exceptional humans

Rebuilding Wild. The first act I had on the board was to designate Pete Brumberg as Wild coordinator and Mike Doyle as understudy with the goal of being future coordinator. It's obvious based on team make up and numbers that we've taken a hit at our AA level 10U through 16U. That doesn't mean we abandon that mission or desire to push, it means we invest in the players that want to push to this level, developing them further this summer and work together to grow this programming back to the levels it previously was. This season Wild will look a bit different, but the development opportunities still exist and will help establish the foundation for stronger Icers teams and future Wild offerings.

Ensuring kids develop at all ages, and levels of play, in a developmentally appropriate way. That means getting great coaches in positions to be successful, additional programming to enhance all of our young athletes, creating opportunities for older age groups to help give back to younger ones, and encouraging coach staffs to be collaborative. Whether it's Icers, Saber cats (Spring hockey), or Wild. We need to provide offerings that are fun, engaging, and developmentally appropriate that push kids to be their best selves while encouraging them to strive to be more in all aspects of life, without pushing them towards burn out.

We don't know who the best is yet, I intend to create the conditions to find out! This means creating as much programming open to all members to expand the development pipeline. I want new players that have never touched the ice (8U - 12U especially) to find ramps into our programming and jump everyone in their age group by year end (yes, including my own kid, yes this just happened at 12U last season with a brand new player jumping everyone in a single season). As a coach, this creates more people to chase, more competition to be had in order to build stronger teams! It also means when we build up the bottom, we push all the kids at the top to be that much better. They have to or they'll slip down the competitive order. We need to find out who the best players are through daily investment in all of them, especially new ones. They'll have to put in the work to grow 10x, all we have to do is set the environment in place for those conditions that anyone could go 10x!

Sharing in the work. I inventoried the jobs of the association. Not counting team staff, or board member positions, we have 38+ jobs of varying scopes, the vast majority of which we have filled out in the first two weeks of the new board. We've had some awesome volunteers in the past to whom we owe a debt of gratitude, but we also need to make their work more visible and job roles more obvious so that we can recruit help in the future to ensure great outcomes for our kids! The Stanley Cup takes a whole team effort; please consider reaching out to get more involved in our team!

Manifesting reality. We are a small association in the middle of central PA... that happens to be the former association of Mac Gadowsky! Mac played Icers hockey from 10U - 14U before going on to bigger things, and other players can too if we build in a developmentally appropriate way to discover who the best is! USA Hockey encourages developing as close to home for as long as possible, in part to keep that fire and passion for the game alive in young athletes. Obviously there comes a time where if your dreams look like Mac's, you'll have to grow beyond what we can support. We need to develop a clear, visual progression of pathways where our kids various dreams are the outcomes. You should be able to look at one picture and know how to get to adult league, Varsity, Club hockey, D1 and beyond pathways. It doesn't mean you'll get there, but we have people that can help guide your path so that we can try and create as many Mac's as possible, while still celebrating the weekend warriors that play pick up hockey the rest of their days after high school!

Some programming currently going on / coming up

Pegula has stick times and open skates you can register for on their calendar - https://pegula.finnlyconnect.com/schedule/411

Details about Icers and Wild registrations can be found on our website

Mike Doyle has been organizing pick up roller hockey at the YMCA, more details on our Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/groups/358332021862630

Megan, Hayden and Coach Davis have been organizing power skating and hockey camp style programming which you can reach out to them or also check the Facebook page for detail

We're always looking to add members to our hockey family. Hockey is a team effort, so if you know of players or new players interested in learning hockey please pass our association info on to them so they can get in touch about how to get started growing with us.

Sports Engine spaces for Wild and Icers are now active and coaches have been encouraged to engage with their teams. Thank you for your understanding as we get lots of new volunteers up to speed and taking on the many jobs of the organization. It's a big production to put on hockey for over 100 families and any ways you can get more involved helps us support our mission of putting on quality youth hockey programs for all our kids. We'll keep sending updates at the organization level here and there about specific things as well as pointing out programming going on.

Be your own Hero, chase future you

I will leave you with this piece of advise to share with your player. It is a unique perspective from actor Matthew Mcconaughey upon accepting an Emmy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT2f-WM86oQ

"when I was 15 years old, I had a very important person in my life come to me and say “who’s your hero?” And I said, “I don’t know, I gotta think about that. Give me a couple of weeks.” I come back two weeks later, this person comes up and says “who’s your hero?” I said, “I thought about it. You know who it is? It’s me in 10 years.” So I turned 25. Ten years later, that same person comes to me and says, “So, are you a hero?” And I was like, “not even close. No, no, no.” She said, “Why?” I said, “Because my hero’s me at 35.” So you see every day, every week, every month and every year of my life, my hero’s always 10 years away. I’m never gonna be my hero. I’m not gonna attain that. I know I’m not, and that’s just fine with me because that keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing."

Enjoy the ice, roller-blades and other experiences this summer, fall, spring and beyond! Keep seeking to find the edge and pushing beyond it. I look forward to working together to create unforgettable experiences for our kids and amazing edgework on ice.

Together, We Are, Wild. Icers. One hockey family.

Let's go.

Coach Ollendyke