About 80
yards and school hockey boxes will be opened in Kazan this year; the filling of
the ice has been completed in 23 of them. Ilsur Metshin, the Mayor of Kazan,
visited the training of the hockey teenage club “Youth”, sessions of which are
held at the stadium of school №70 in the Kirovsky region. The head of the
Tatarstan’s capital appreciated the quality of ice and talked to the young
hockey players.
A plastic
hockey box in the school №70 (street Krasnokokshayskaya, 178) was established
in 2007, and it immediately became the center of attraction in the district,
where about 8,000 residents live. The site is used for training of students and
teenage boys from the club, and in the spare time - as an ice rink for public
skating. In 2014, the asphalt pavement was laid in the hockey box to simplify
the work on the ice filling and for active use of the site during the summer.
On the ice,
the Mayor of Kazan told the children as in his youth he, being the captain of
the hockey team, was waiting for the first frost together with his friends to
fill the playing field and start training. “There was not artificial ice. We
went on the box in turns since 9 pm. The first five came out and filled, and
the crust was formed, and then the second five went out, the third, and the
training started at 5 am”, shared I. Metshin his memories.
The Mayor
noted that the children could not even dream about such sites before. “There
weren’t little skates. I had a size 36 and the coach gave me, as the team
captain, skates size 41 - this was considered as luck. How did we skate? But we
scored! Do you score?” the Mayor asked young players.
“Yes,” said
the boys in unison. Indeed, since 2009, teams, led by Rafis Gabdrakhmanov, the
coach of the teenage club “Youth”, annually become winners of regional and city
competitions in hockey the “Golden Puck”, football – the “Leather Ball”, as
well as floorball – the “Golden Hockey Stick”.
During the
training, I. Metshin showed the pupils of the club a small master class,
hitting hockey gates several times in a row. As it is in the game, the boys
greeted each accurate shot of the Mayor by banging sticks on the ice in
approving.