On 7 November 2019, the new Central Sports
Complex of the Avangard Ice Hockey Academy will be opened in Omsk. This event
is part of the cultural agenda of the 16th Russia–Kazakhstan Interregional
Cooperation Forum organised by the Ministry of Economic Development of the
Russian Federation and the Roscongress Foundation. The opening will be aligned
with a warm-up game between minor ice hockey teams of children born in 2009
representing Avangard (Russia) and Barys (Kazakhstan) hockey clubs.
The Central Sports Complex of the Avangard Ice
Hockey Academy was commissioned in 2H 2019. The Complex is home to the 1,200-seat
Ice Palace and a campus for out-of-town Academy students. The Ice Palace has
two arenas – the main arena designed under the standards of the International
Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) and the practice arena. The venue also houses a
medical centre, seven training rooms, a gym, and a press room. The Ice Palace
is connected via a heated tunnel to the campus accommodating 160 out-of-town
students, which also has classrooms, a recreational facility, and a canteen.
The development of the Sports Complex was
sponsored by Gazprom Group, under the Gazprom for Children programme. The
Complex project was designed to meet the requirements of Avangard (Omsk) which
has been implementing its interregional Avangard Academy social programme
through its youth sports school since 2012. The programme aims at advancing the
training of young hockey players and highly skilled coaching staff, as well as
promoting ice hockey to children. To select young talent for the Academy and
promote the sport at Omsk schools, the Popular Hockey project has been
designed. More schools are given their own ice and sports rinks (25 as of now),
have free sports classes where elementary-aged students receive professional
coaching, and host inter-school tournaments.
“We have built modern facilities to develop
children’s hockey, and we actively share our experience,” said the Omsk Region
Governor Alexander Burkov. In a few years’ time, the boys and girls from junior
hockey clubs will join the big sport to show their talent on major arenas, such
as the new Omsk Arena. The state-of-the-art arena is scheduled for launch in
2022; it is designed both to provide training grounds for adult hockey players
and to host major Russian and international tournaments. In particular, it is
seen as a potential venue for the 2023 IIHF World Junior Championship. We are
committed to sports cooperation with other countries. We invite Kazakhstan,
too, to share experience with hockey clubs and, of course, with our academy
where young talents are trained.”
The Avangard Ice Hockey Academy has already
transformed into a training hub for young athletes from across Siberia and the
Urals region, and its branches are being established in cities from the Omsk
Region to the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area. In April 2019, we launched a
franchise development programme, with the Moscow-based Sea Lions Club becoming
our first franchisee. Franchisees can benefit from Avangard’s experience, the
club’s IT-platform, and the club brand book.
“The opening of the Academy’s sports complex in
Omsk is an important milestone in our ambitious programme for the development
of children’s hockey,” said the Chairman of the Board at Avangard Club
Alexander Krylov. Popular hockey is the basis of the so-called “talent funnel”
enabling us to involve as many children as possible in training and
tournaments. The most talented of them will be able to fulfill themselves as
professional athletes as they proceed through the funnel to join the Academy,
where we have gathered the best coaches, deployed the most effective training
methods, and created comfortable environment to fast track young hockey players
to professional sports. And we are talking not just about children from Omsk –
the Academy branches are already operating in several cities in Siberia and in
Balashikha outside Moscow, and we have piloted our franchise projects. We are
gradually expanding the programme to the federal level.”
Regional, interregional and international
tournaments for children’s teams are an important element of training for young
hockey players. The warm-up game between 10-year old members of minor ice
hockey teams representing Avangard and Barys promotes this kind of cooperation,
timed to mark the opening of the new sports complex. Barys hockey club was
founded in Astana in 1999 and plays within the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL).
The Barys Children and Youth Sports School was established in 2012, with about
700 children across 12 age categories, from 5 to 16, attending it.
On 7 November, the Academy’s new sports complex
will also host its very first game, as Omsk Hawks will welcome the Tyumensky
Legion (Novosibirsk) on the new ice rink in the Youth Hockey League’s 2019/2020
season.
