Dear Kam,

I wanted to take a minute and thank you again for spending three weeks with us down here in New Mexico this fall. What a great experience for our program! We have never entered our fall season skating this well or in this good of shape. I can see it in the individual skaters as well as the team play. You had a great impact on our program, rec. and comp, all the teams. Our peewee team played the top team in its league last weekend and came out roaring. We played them dead even in our very first games of the season! I've really enjoyed watching our midgets skate. Their foot movement is excellent and we got a great jumpstart on conditioning. The bantams, under the hard work of their coaches, are utilizing a lot of your drills and routines. Practices are 100% attended and the enthusiasm in that group is wonderful. And, on a personal note, after your defenseman's camp this summer, my son looks like he has been playing defense for years.

Watching you work with our kids was a great experience for me. I learned a great deal about what goes into motivating kids to do their best. I was particularly impressed by how quickly you learned who all the kids were and how much personal time you were able to give them in a pretty compressed group format. I think the thing that really caught my attention was your willingness to sit in the locker rooms with the kids before and after each session and joke with them, get to know them, answer questions. We all started to feel the extra effort and intensity from things like that and the atmosphere just kept building. By the second week, every one of our kids wanted to get better. We are not in the hockey mainstream here but we have a lot of kids and their parents who want to do well. Your clinics and summer camp programs are our way of helping our kids stay competitive with the elite programs. Your motto, "challenge each student to strive for maximum overall improvement", works because you approach each of your sessions that way. Our coaches, kids and parents picked up on that. It was a wonderful way to start the season for us.

Sincerely,

Richard deHaas
President, New Mexico Amateur Hockey Association