Summit hockey camp helps prepare players for season

A select group of the territory's most talented hockey players will prepare for the upcoming season over the next three days by taking part in Yukon Junior Invitational Prep Camp.

A select group of the territory’s most talented hockey players will prepare for the upcoming season over the next three days by taking part in Yukon Junior Invitational Prep Camp.
The camp, which is being sponsored by Northwestel Summit Hockey Schools, began on Thursday and will conclude on Sunday with a scrimmage.
Participants in the hockey camp are being divided up into two groups. The different age levels include bantam, midget and junior players.
The two head instructors at the camp are Joe Martin and Danny Flynn. Martin is currently the head coach of the Creston Valley Thunder Cats in the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League and had four Yukoners play on his team last season.
Flynn became the head coach and director of hockey operations for the Moncton Wildcats of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League just one year after helping, as an assistant coach, the New York Islanders achieve a playoff berth in the 2006-07 season.
Last season, Yukoner Ted Stephens became the first hockey player from the territory to crack the line up of a QMJHL team, making the Wildcats after Flynn saw him at the prep camp.
Flynn also has coaching experience at the university level, coaching at St. Francis Xavier in Nova Scotia for 10 years. In 2004, he helped lead the team to a Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) national championship, which was the first in the school’s history.
In his 10 years at StFX he recorded 177 career wins, making him the all-time winningest coach in the university’s history.
Flynn, who has been a part of every prep camp, said the Yukon players continue to improve. 
“The skill development here has really taken off and I really think the players have been improving,“ he said.

“It’s a challenge here because of your geography to get a lot of competition you have to travel to do that, so camps like this help improve the kids skill level and I think help their development.“
Martin, who coached in the Mustangs program from 2003-2007, said there are plenty of local benefits to holding this camp every year.
“(The benefits) are spread pretty much Yukon-wide with Northwestel putting on a sponsorship for this, it’s provided funding for the kids outside of Whitehorse to come in,“ he said.