Berkley Ice Arena Scores Former John Lindell Ice Arena Tenant

The Dragons Youth Hockey Association is on the move.

DYHA recently announced a new partnership agreement with the Berkley Parks & Recreation Department to relocate all of its training programs to the starting in September with its fall sessions. The organization’s home had been the John Lindell Ice Arena in Royal Oak since 2007.

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“It’s huge,” Parks & Rec Director Tom Colwell said. “And a lot of the kids in their programs are Berkley and Huntington Wood families, really that’s who we want using the space, the people from the local area. We’ve had some great tenants over the last couple of years that have really helped us, but we’ve had to draw from outside areas. Now we are able to get those Berkley families back.”

In 2009, Colwell initiated . Under the plan, the department has taken over ice scheduling and worked to generate revenue.

For the first time in several years, the Arena Fund was self-sustaining going into fiscal year 2011-2012. that a tenant for the all-seasons room inside the arena soon would sign on, helping to keep the facility in the black and going strong. 

Berkley had two advantages over other venues in area: The Berkley Ice Arena has space that DYHA can lease to build an off-ice training area and it offers a flexible schedule with lots of open hours.

“The move is mostly about opportunity,” DHYA President Matt Tomlinson said.

The program focuses on developing young hockey players who range in age from five- to 14-years-old. Off-ice training stations are becoming a more important part of teaching those players fundamental skills.

“The off-ice training has recently become recognized as an extremely important and vital piece to overall hockey training,” Tomlinson said. “At the Berkley Ice Arena, we are going to have an ability to take where their old studio rink used to be to create a big off-ice training area.”

Ice can no longer be laid down in the studio rink because the floor cracked a couple of years ago.

“We’ve been trying to come up with a plan to be able to use that space for training for the last couple of years, but we just weren’t able to come up with the right fit,” Colwell said. “Together with the Dragons,  we’ll be able to develop that area so it will really work well for the community.”

Tomlinson said the off-ice area is still in the planning stages, but when the season opens Sept. 1 it will be up and running. There will be shooting, stick handling and fitness and agility stations in the space that all players in the organization will use in their training. 

Another deciding factor for DYHA was ice time. In Royal Oak, it had no problem getting prime time hours on the weekends, but struggled getting enough time for all its age groups and training sessions during the week.

It forced a lot of teams to skate three days in a row and created a very unbalanced schedule. 

“Our priority has always been the youngest kids and the skill development programs, so we have to dedicate the limited prime time ice time we were getting to that and that left very little time for team training during the week,” Tomlinson said. “This (move) will provide a better balance of spreading out when the kids skate, so they aren’t skating too many days in a row.”

And Tomlinson noted there has been little downside to moving the program. There will be no ice fee increase for players, so costs from the past season will remain stable.

The DYHA also has plans to work with the Parks & Rec Department to try and improve the Berkley Ice Arena. The arena’s roof needs some attention and the groups want to work together on that and other advancements such as improving the locker rooms and mats around the rink.