Hockey: Crystal Lake Yellow Jackets players to attend Red Bull Ice Hockey Academy in Austria

When Michael Boyd laces up his skates and steps onto the rink at the Red Bull Ice Hockey Academy in Salzburg, Austria, it will be like nothing the hockey player of 12 years has experienced.

"I actually don't know," Boyd, 15, of Cary said. "I’ve never seen an Olympic-sized rink before."

That's just one of the many firsts Boyd will encounter.

This week, Boyd and Crystal Lake Yellow Jackets teammates Dylan Bremer (Woodstock), Sam Gentges (Prairie Grove), Giovanni Lanera (Cary) and Nolan Rainey (Crystal Lake) will get to skate on a rink that's considerably larger – about 15 feet wider – than what they're used to.

The five were handpicked by Keith "Casey" Van Damme – the former president of FireWagon Hockey Inc. and Yellow Jackets Hockey Club – to go to the Red Bull Academy, which is considered Europe's most modern youth training center.

Van Damme, who is from Belgium and has a masters in coaching for USA Hockey, still coaches the Yellow Jackets Bantams, including Boyd, Bremer, Gentges, Lanera and Rainey. The five traveled to Munich on the first leg of their trip Saturday.

They will spend the next week at the Red Bull Academy, competing and training in Salzburg. They are among a group of 18 Americans going, Van Damme said, along with players from Minnesota, California and Pennsylvania.

"They’ve had a great opportunity this spring and summer to do something most kids can’t do," Van Damme said "The Red Bull Academy itself over there is probably the best in the world. They spent almost $60 million on these facilities."

The Red Bull Academy opened in 2014 and follows the International Ice Hockey Development Model. The Academy has nine teams, from an under-8 team to two U20 teams, and has a history of producing top talent. The Red Bull club was founded in 2000.

In the third round of the 2016 NHL Draft, the Blackhawks drafted Belgian goalie Wouter Peeters, who played for the Red Bull Academy U20 team.

According to the official website, the Red Bull Academy "is where the national and international ice hockey players are competently nurtured and helped on their way to becoming top players."

"It’s going to be crazy," Bremer said. "It’s going to be amazing – to be able to play against those guys on that rink. Just being able to get the opportunity to go over there, it’s going to be awesome."

To prepare for the Red Bull Academy, Bremer and his teammates underwent high-performance training five days a week at the Crystal Ice House and the Davis Speed Center in Crystal Lake.

Most of the time, the training is off ice and doesn't involve a puck.

"We do conditioning drills, and we don’t touch the puck the whole time," Bremer said. "We have maybe one practice in the week where we touch the puck. We just prepare ourselves physically and mentally for the wide rink that we’re going to be playing on."

At the Davis Speed Center, they'll lift twice a week and do speed and agility drills for two days.

"We do a lot of speed work, agility work and power production," Boyd said. "Strength training, weight lifting and also changing direction and working on our secondary muscles."

"It helps a lot with speed and quickness," Bremer added. "We’re getting a lot stronger, and our coach keeps telling us that our legs are getting stronger, which is huge."

In addition to local training, the five went to Minnesota and participated in a national showcase tournament with the Bauer Vapors. They also went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, training with state-of-the-art video analysis equipment, including a skating treadmill.

They were tested on both their strength and aerobic training, hockey skills, including skating, shooting, stick handling, and also went through sports nutrition and injury prevention training.

At the showcase, they went through bench marking, which is a series of measurements that go into each player's unique profile.

"They bench mark over 2,100 kids," Van Damme said. "From that, they can tell what level they are at, so you get constant improvement as they grow. If they want to play in the U.S. Junior Hockey League, they’ve got to meet certain bench marks."

Boyd, Bremer, Gentges, Lanera and Rainey haven't stopped talking about the academy since Van Damme told them the good news.

"It was crazy in the room; we were just so excited," Boyd said. "Our coach had to stop talking every couple of minutes because we were so happy. We’ve all been talking about it nonstop. We’re so fortunate that our coach gave us the opportunity."

"It’s a little nerve-wracking, but I think it's easier because we’re all going together," Bremer said. "We're pumped."