National Sports Center Blog

US Women's Olympic Hockey Team announced

By Barclay Kruse, NSC Chief Communications Officer

The 21 members of the 2010 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team were announced on December 17 in a big ceremony at the Mall of America. The team has been training at the Schwan Super Rink on the NSC campus since August, and will continue to train at the NSC leading up to the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games.

 

Above: Red, white and blue streamers at the team announcement.

There are several ways you can participate with the team and support their quest for the gold medal. All practices are open to the public. The team practices on rink 6 at the Super Rink. In a partnership with the players, the NSC has created a Fan Club that will hold special events for you to meet the players.

 

L to R: Olympic team members Julie Chu, Jocelyn Lamoureaux and Kerry Weiland. Chu and Weiland were also members of the  National Team Residency Program at the NSC last year. 
 

Click here to get all the information on the team's practice schedule and to find out how you can join the Fan Club.  

Rod Carew visits the NSC

By Barclay Kruse, NSC Chief Communications Officer

Minnesota Twins legend Rod Carew visited the NSC on December 16. The Baseball Hall of Famer spent the evening as a guest instructor at the Minnesota Twins Training Academy at the National Sports Center. Carew played for the Twins from 1967 to 1978 and was voted into the Hall of Fame on his first ballot in 1991.

 
Above, baseball legend Rod Carew helps a young player with his batting technique.

The Twins baseball academy is utilizing indoor space in the NSC's Sports Hall throughout the winter. The NSC and the Twins formed a partnership to add indoor baseball instruction to the NSC's sports portfolio.

Watch for an interview with Carew in a January episode of NSCtv, the National Sports Center's weekly video news show about happenings at the NSC.

What Day is Today?

  

By Marie DeMars, NSC Media Intern

I woke up this morning slightly disoriented. I'd been working the past three days, so it shouldn't be Sunday or Monday. But I have the distinct feeling it's not Friday. Maybe Thursday? Shaking the sleepiness out of my brain, I realized it was Monday, and I was trying to catch up after working long days at Star of the North in St. Cloud.

For those of you who aren't familiar, the Star of the North Games is Minnesota’s annual Olympic-style amateur sports festival. Over the last two weekends, over 6,000 athletes from all over the state competed in 24 different sports. There was even a team there from Baudette, which is nestled along the Minnesota/Canada border.

Bartt Gevens (local director), Abby Maxon (intern) and Kathy Petron (soccer director) watch soccer - and Barclay's camera.

Three interns from the NSC plus Barclay, who is the State Games director in Minnesota, hauled two cars full of office supplies and team registrations to St. Cloud for two weekends in a row. It was a little more intense than your run-of-the-mill weekend tournament because we were hosting so many sports at one time in several different venues. Some of the most interesting competitions included the Family Eco Adventure Race, which we held in a granite quarry. Child/adult teams ran, biked, canoed and "orienteered" their way around the course. Also fun to witness was Carter Holmes, a Star of the North regular who returned after having a combined stroke and heart attack.

One of our gold medalists in track & field.

Seeing Minnesota's amateur sports community in action was a new experience for me. The infrastructure behind each sport proved sturdy, and the personalities of generous volunteers and directors made me hopeful that the spirit of the games has a long life ahead of it. We're lucky to have such a vibrant group of athletes, too. From lacrosse to disc golf, Minnesota's youth and adults are getting out there and playing games. Being a part of that was worth not knowing what day of the week it is. (It is Monday, right?)

See oodles more photos here in our galleries on the Star of the North homepage.

What happens here doesn't stay here!

By Barclay Kruse, NSC Chief Communications Officer

"What happens here, doesn't stay here."

Besides being a take-off on the old Vegas marketing slogan, that's a slogan that we in the National Sports Center's media department have started to use as a driving philosophy in many of our media projects.

Here's what that slogan means to us: the teams, families and athletes who travel from around the world to stay and play at the NSC don't leave their experiences on the turf and ice of the NSC. They take their stories, pictures, memories and personal growth experiences back home to share with family and friends who couldn't make the trip. For every single person who travels to play in an event at the NSC, who know there are many more watching and listening for phone calls, texts, tweets, photos and emails sent home by the players and fans here.

My personal feeling is that because we're mostly about youth sports here (sorry adults, I know you're out there too), the stories and experiences from NSC events are shared more passionately, and they sometimes live on, often for a lifetime.

That's also why the NSC has created so many new media products to help everyone here share their experiences with all their family and friends who can't make the trip, giving everyone a little window on what happens here. There's NSCtv, our weekly video show; Kick TV, the daily video show that runs only during Schwan's USA CUP; and NSCwebcast.tv, our live webcasting service that broadcasts selected events live year around. There's also photo galleries of scenes from our larger events, and new this summer a Schwan's USA CUP Twitter account.

And then there's all the media coverage the NSC gets from hometown media covering their local teams. We track that coverage as best we can, and we're always amazed at huge number of impressions we get all over the country and the world. A lot of it is in smaller community weeklies, but it still adds up big time.

I thought about this just today, when I got a Google News feed to a lengthy article in the Northeast Arkansas Times. What happened here that would capture the attention of a mid-sized paper in Arkansas? Well, the Fayetteville High School ultimate team traveled to the NSC on May 16-17 to play in the Ultimate Players Association High School Western USA Championship, where they joined 27 other elite high school ultimate teams from all over Western half of the U.S. The team lost all three of their games, to teams from Kansas, Minnesota and Washington State. But they still got a big article in their hometown newspaper, and the National Sports Center and Blaine, Minnesota got mentioned too.

What happens here, doesn't stay here. It's true.

 

Ready for 2011? A big year for ice events at NSC

By Barclay Kruse, NSC Chief Communications Officer

2011 is two years away, but Pete Carlson, the Ice Arena Operations and Programs Director at the Schwan Super Rink, has reason to be pumped up for the clock to run fast.

The National Sports Center recently learned that we have been awarded three big national/international ice-sport events that will happen in a four-month period of time. Here's a rundown of the schedule.
April 1-3
2011 USA Hockey Disabled Hockey National Festival - 60+ teams
Programs will be divided into four disciplines - standing/amputee, deaf/heard of hearing, sled, and special hockey. 
 
April 6-10
2011 USA Hockey Girls and Women National Championship - 60+ teams
The NSC hosted this event in 2001.  We will host the best female hockey athletes from around the country.
 
July 24-31
2011 ISI World Figure Skating Championships
The NSC hosted this event in 2000 and 2004.  This event will bring recreational skaters and upper level skaters together in one location.  This is ISI's most prestigious event and will bring more than 1,500 participants to the NSC.

Once again, the world's largest ice arena with eight sheets of ice, proves it's also the world leader in hosting big events.
 

Blaine HS football team practices in Sports Hall

By Barclay Kruse, NSC Chief Communications Officer

When the Blaine High School football team upset undefeated Eden Prairie 28-24 in the State Tournament last weekend we thought we might be getting a phone call from the Blaine coaches wanting to use our new FieldTurf field for indoor practice.

Sure enough, this afternoon the Bengals arrived for a two-hour practice.

 

The Bengals will play Cretin-Derham Hall at the Metrodome in Minneapolis tomorrow night, November 14, at 8:15 pm. A victory will put them into the State 5A championship game on November 28, and we also are willing to bet they'll be back to practice in our Sports Hall a few more times.

BLOG UPDATE: Blaine defeated Cretin-Derham Hall 28-27 in overtime to advance to the state championship game. The 11-1 Bengals will play 12-0 Wayzata at 7:00 pm on Friday, November 28 in the Metrodome. Go Bengals!

And now for something completely different; NSC cyclocross!

By Barclay Kruse, NSC Chief Communications Officer

Last Saturday, on a bitter cold and windy day, 156 riders showed up to compete in the 2nd annual NSC Velodrome Cyclocross race. This event was organized by the Little Guy Racing Team, sponsored by the Behind Bars Bicycle Shop, and some of the proceeds from the race will go to the NSC Velodrome Fund, to help promote junior racing and track operations.

If you're not familiar with cyclocross, it's a form of bike racing that combines riding with cross-country running. A typical cyclocross course has barriers that need to be hurdled, steep hills to run up, and technical sections that put a premium on bike handling skills. Cyclocross is a fall sport, and many riders use it as a fun way to keep fitness during the off-season.

Bad weather? It's part of the lore of cyclocross.

Saturday's course circled field U3, twisted around the Velodrome, and even ducked into the Velodrome infield. Each lap took five minutes or so, and races ran from 30 minutes to an hour in length. Here's a sampling of photos I took during the featured Category 1/2 race.

Below: Adam Bergman (front) and Doug Swanson battled back and forth for the lead. Bergman grabbed the lead for good on the last lap and rode to victory.

 

The technical course took riders into the infield of the NSC Velodrome:

 

Bergman shows perfect barrier hurdling form. There was a set of three barriers on the north end of soccer field U3.

If you want to see more of my photos, click here. Local bike journalist Andy Frye has a nice article and a big photo set posted on bikethrow.com, a Minnesota bike racing website.

NSCtv, the NSC's weekly video show, was there to cover the race as well. That show is scheduled to run on the November 20 show. Check it out.

It's turf!

By Barclay Kruse, NSC Chief Communications Officer

The installation is done, the FieldTurf crew has packed up and departed, and fellow NSC staff member Scott Clasen and I just finished a 40-minute lunch hour run on the new turf. Our verdict: Most excellent.

Here are a few photos showing what you'll see when you arrive for our big New Turf Open House on Sunday from 2-4 pm. (There'll still be time to stop by after the Vikings-Packers game ends.)

Below: NSC staff members Scott Clasen, John Connelly and Roger Stawski test the way a soccer ball bounces on the new turf. (None of the three played soccer as kids, and it shows.)

 

Here are the new rules:

 

A television screen will show the day's field schedule.

 

You'll check in your team with the Sports Hall monitor at this window:

 

The NSC's Track and Field Director Bill Roll has measured out the 200-meter track, and track club runners will run around these cones. NSC Track Club starts Monday.

 

The new goals have been delivered, and one great new feature is that we'll be able to lift the goals up to the ceiling to get them out the way when we change users.

So, that's it. We're ready to have you practice and play on our new field. Let the fun begin!

Turf install day #10; almost done!

By Barclay Kruse, NSC Chief Communications Officer

We can see the finish line! Today, on the FieldTurf crew's tenth day of work, they'll be finishing up the job, literally within hours of when I'm writing this.

The final step is finish grooming. The best way to describe finish grooming is that it's pretty much what I did last weekend when I swept my kitchen floor. Of course, I was sweeping up crumbs and stray pieces of cat food; they're sweeping up shredded rubber.

First, the power sweeper picks up the excess rubber pellets and drives them into piles against the wall:

 

 

Then, the crew uses these decidedly high-tech tools to clean up the piles. Don't try this at home! OK, I guess you can; in fact if you've done any housecleaning recently, you probably have.

 

 

And here's an overhead view. Looking good, don't you think?

  

The turf will definitely be ready for our big New Turf Open House on Sunday, November 9, from 2:00-4:00pm. Bring a soccer ball, lacrosse equipment, or any other sports equipment you'd like and give the new turf a test run. It's free, and everyone is invited!

Turf install day #8; still infilling

By Barclay Kruse, NSC Chief Communications Officer

Today's turf installation update will be pretty brief. The crew is continuing with the infilling process, alternating sand and rubber.

 

Here is a photo of the shredded rubber:

 

The total depth of the sand-rubber infill will be 1 1/4". We're covering 60,996 square feet. We did some quick math here in the office, and came up with a total of 6,353.75 cubic feet of infill.

No wonder they've been spreading infill for a full two days, and there's still more to go.