The Day – Before stepping on ice, Kraken teach hockey to Seattle kids
Seattle – Her long, black hair is dyed with strands of purple. She wears cargo pants and black boots. The young girl with a stick in her hand does not fit the traditional image of a hockey player.
Neither the boy with the red, bushy hair in the yellow shirt, nor the young girl who demonstrates stick handling from a wheelchair.
In this case, these children are two-dimensional characters in an educational document developed by Kyle Boyd, Seattle Kraken’s director of youth and community development. His dream is to bring the game of hockey to the widest possible audience in Seattle and beyond, with the idea of appealing to children of different genders, sizes and abilities while at the same time increasing the young team’s fan base.
“The characters become great avatars and the way of saying, ‘Hey, this is a sport anyone can get into,'” Boyd said. “And then we want to make sure we have these avenues for everyone to get into.”
Before the Kraken hit the ice for their first NHL season this fall, Boyd and the team have already begun introducing the basics of hockey to schools and youth programs in the area. But they do it differently than other teams in the past.
A retired elementary school and high school history teacher, Boyd was looking for a school-based ball hockey program that the Kraken could build around to introduce the game into physical education. There weren’t any that met elementary school physical education standards, so Boyd set out to develop one that would do so while trying to bring other parts of the franchise to market.
He worked with SHAPE America, a national organization that helps set the standards for K-12 physical education, to ensure the program meets all of the criteria for educational requirements. He used a local artist to create characters representative of children of all sizes, races, and abilities to illustrate the skills being taught such as stick handling, passing, and shooting.
SHAPE America said it was the first ball hockey program developed by an NHL team to meet elementary educational standards. The Kraken have already run some outreach programs with local youth programs this summer and hope to be able to implement the curriculum with partner schools in the current school year.
“Hockey was something I taught every few years that there isn’t a set curriculum. It was something of a separate plan for the unit, ”said Derek Severson, a health and physical education specialist in the Highline School District south of Seattle. “So this conversation with Kyle really led to the question, ‘Are there any hockey curricula out there?’ And that really didn’t exist. “
Teams across the NHL have tutorials in their respective communities, so Boyd and the Kraken aren’t outliers in that sense.
But Boyd wanted to do something bigger.
Partnering with SHAPE America enabled Boyd to write a curriculum that is educational in as many places as possible. Michelle Carter, director of education content and programs at SHAPE America, said many organizations such as the USTA, NFL, and MLB have worked with the organization to create curricula for their sport.
“If you can expose kids to something they might not otherwise be exposed to, that’s a big win for kids,” Carter said. “They try something, they are presented with something that they may not have, and then it could be something that they could play as an adult or that they might be able to do more often.”
The curriculum is both a learning tool for students and a guide for educators, especially in the Pacific Northwest where many grew up without hockey as part of their background. A priority for Boyd was the ease of understanding and implementation of the program.
“We had to do this first introduction at this very basic level,” said Boyd. “Some (programs) are so advanced that you can do more than exercise plan documents and less like that. Here are the basics of holding a hockey stick. It’s very beginner. “
He wanted a pictorial representation as part of the curriculum showing a number of different characters demonstrating the skills being taught, as Boyd wants the program to reach multiple communities.
Step inside RC Johnson, a Seattle-based artist unrelated to hockey.
“I’m not an athlete. I don’t know anything about hockey, ”said Johnson. “As a kid I saw ‘The Mighty Ducks’ and that was it.”
Johnson’s job was to bring to life rough ideas of what these characters were supposed to represent. Drawing on cartoons from his youth – “Hey Arnold” was an inspiration – he worked extensively with Boyd, using borrowed equipment to help him do little things right, like placing hands on the stick.
“I just played around with a number of different designs and somehow found a groove with some characters that I liked,” said Johnson.
The next step is implementation. The curriculum is to be introduced in some schools this year. Severson said it wasn’t a requirement for teachers in his district to use it, but he suggests that they take a few weeks – probably in winter – to include floor hockey in the educational program.
“I think where we start is in the classroom to expose them,” said Severson. “It’s the first time students get hold of a stick and just learn the basics because I really believe that hockey can be widespread in our community. But it all starts with giving the students the opportunity to do this. “