The "RAYHA Hockey Center made its first appearance at Parkview Family Fun Night.

As Parkview Center School chooses not to do any door-to-door fundraising, the school annually hosts Family Fun Night (carnival games, silent auction, and lots of food) as their annual fundraiser as well as a social gathering. This year’s event raised approximately $11,000 dollars. These funds will go toward the purchase of Smart Boards.

Smart Boards are pretty incredible tools. They can be used in almost every class in school, and combine computer technology with a traditional whiteboard. This combination results in a teaching tool that has a "touch-sensitive display and connects to your computer and digital projector to show your computer image. You can then control computer applications directly from the display, write notes in digital ink and save your work to share later. Very cool stuff indeed!

The "RAYHA Hockey Center" is a three-point program intended to raise awareness of the many outstanding things that RAYHA and hockey in general have to offer. Through this program RAYHA enjoys greater visibility by participation in school events. Schools that invite RAYHA to participate gain an active fundraising partner (there is no cost to the school) and the students get a fun activity that is suitable for all ages.

Part 1 – Hockey Shoot skills area. Participants spend tickets for the opportunity to shoot a puck through a target into the net and win a prize. Successful shooters won a knee hockey stick with the RAYHA website address. Near misses earned a RAYHA pencil. Both the stick and pencil are important tools in raising student athletes! At Parkview’s event, we had about 250 participants in the hockey shoot over the course of 2 ½ hours.

Part 2 – Raider equipment photo shoot. In this area we outfitted kids in full Raider gear, and took their photos. The result of kids (sometimes as young as 4 years of age) wearing adult sized breezers, shoulder pads, gloves, helmet and Raider jersey is pretty darn cute.

To see the results of these photos, go to www.rosevillehockey.org click on the "Pictures" tab on the left side, and then look in the file marked "Parkview Family Fun Night" We took about 50 or so photos, and every one of them was a winner!

Part 3 – Information! Kari Kennedy – our communications director developed a fantastic informational piece that I call "Why hockey is cool!" that was handed out to about 75 folks. This informational sheet also included the directions on how to access the photos from part 2 of the Hockey Center.

As important as part 3 is to the Hockey Center, the best information, the best example of why hockey is so cool came from the folks that were working the booth.

John Jernberg, Theresa Putzier, Maya Jernberg, Rick Distad, Deanna Kohanek, Tom Zerse as well as Erica Allen, Bethany Brausen, Dani Kerr, Molly Eagles, and Hanna Brodt from the Raider Girls squad. Their help was invaluable and every one of them was outstanding in answering questions, and putting a face to Roseville hockey. A special thank you goes out to Jeff Pauletti at Top Shelf Athletics for supplying some of the equipment to make this night a success. Special "thank you" to Maya Jernberg for developing rules for the hockey shoot part of the program. Thank you all so much for your help!

The Parkview event was a success on many levels – We raised money for a great event, the kids had a memorable evening, and the visibility of RAYHA and Roseville Hockey was heightened.