It has been 29 years since Doug Andress suited up for the Iroquois Falls Junior Eskis hockey team. Next month, the Iroquois Falls native brings his own hockey school to the Jus Jordan Arena for the second straight year.
Andress says the school is full and has a waiting list for its August 19th to 23rd session. It involves eight hours a day of training on and off the ice.
“We use the curling rink because the curling rink doesn’t have ice in it,” he says, “so there’s those biscuit pucks, so we do an hour of stickhandling at the curling rink and then we also use the fields in behind, so there’s an hour of off-ice training in behind, too.”
Among Andress’s staff for the school are two players from Brockville, where he lives now. Cole Shepherdson and Hugo Allard will suit up this coming season for the Hearst Lumberjacks.
Andress says the hockey school is all about giving back, in honour of the people who helped him
“I can think down the lines, the people that coached me from when I started novice, all the way ‘til I played – I played ten years professional hockey. So I can think of all the people that kind of made those dreams come true for me.”
The next part of his dream would be seeing one or two players from his hockey school achieve the same dream.
Listen to our interview right here.
