3.0. SR 04-02-2001 - Laserfiche WebLink

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~EAR IN E VIEW The Spring of 2000 found the Elk River Boys Hockey Team not making it to state, however the attendance continues to be strong with record crowds attending the games. The following are the yearly attendance for the past four seasons for the regular season Conference and Non Conference games played at the Elk River Arena (11 games per year): Year Attendance 97 - 98 5,157 98 - 99 8,058 99 - 00 10,403 00 - 01 8,021 The Breakaway Spring and Summer Hockey leagues that the Arena and Community Recreation run jointly are in its fifth season. The leagues' mission is to provide a fun learning experience for all players participating in the league while keeping the cost at a minimum expense for each player. The league is very popular in the younger levels. The Skating Academy, which is also a joint effort between the Arena and Community Recreation, has again shown increasing amounts of skaters participating in the program. The program offers skating lessons for all ages and abilities. The Academy will offer a new program this coming Fall, Hockey Skating lessons. Lessons will show skaters how to control their edges, correct ways to stop, and to skate backwards. Just developed is the Figure Skating Club. The club is independent from the Skating Academy and is operated by the parents of the club like Youth Hockey. The club will give skaters the opportunity to compete at meets. Ice hours between the four years of operation has minor fluctuations from year to year (See attached chart) the biggest changes came from the 1997 and 1998 spring and summer season. Even though our Summer ice sales are increasing, I believe in the next couple of years the demand will stabilize. The city of Buffalo has passed a 3.1 million-dollar expansion to add another sheet of ice to their existing sheet. Monticello / Annandale and Maple Lake High School hockey will most likely move their program to Buffalo. This will open up about 100 hours of ice time from November through February. I have already been in contact with a few associations that would like to purchase some of these hours when they become available. We should be able to sell these hours, however the extra revenue that their games brought in will be hard to recoup. The two major improvements to the Arena this year were the rubber matting and painting in the Olympic rink. Both of these items really gave the rink an atmosphere of a real rink.