Parents and players, (Peewee B)

I want to introduce myself; Royle Prince, as the coach for the Peewee Jr. Aces and the assistant coach of our team, Mark Skibinski.  We are excited for the reorganization and new direction the Jr. Aces Comp Hockey Program is taking in 2009 under the leadership of ‘volunteer’ Rob Snelson.  This organization has recognized the high costs of comp hockey and made significant steps to minimize your costs in this turbulent economy.

I’m Royle Prince and will be the head coach. I’m 36 years old, I grew up in Anchorage playing comp hockey from squirts through high school.  After high school, I went and played a couple of years of junior college football at Sierra Junior College.  I then transferred to the University of Nevada, Reno where I finished my four year degree with a degree in Physical Education.   I started and directed the University of Nevada’s Club Hockey Program and was the head coach / player.  I got the program to a point where we started recruiting with a budget from the UNR foundation and started giving partial scholarships.  While directing the University of Nevada hockey program I also initiated and directed the adult and youth hockey programs for Northern Nevada for 6 years.  I was invited to tryout every year with the Reno Renegades; later became the Rage, and practiced with that pro team in Reno everyday for 4 years.  During this same time I was the head of USA Hockey for northern Nevada and California. 

Mark Skibinski will be an assistant coach this year.  Mark is 39 years, played Division 1 hockey at Air Force.  He spent some time coaching there before accepting the head coaching position at Robert Morris College.  Mark left that coaching position to become a pilot with Alaska Airlines.  Mark is very well known within the Anchorage hockey community and currently recruits for the Air Force Academy; he is a fun loving guy with a super up-beat personality that will definitely bring the love of hockey to our squad along with attention to detail.

As a staff we believe the biggest components of comp hockey are quality of coaching, ice time and personally I believe the third is that we as coaches consistently encourage kids.  Our staff completely understands the components of fun, being part of a team, building friendships, and social confidence is priceless.  As a coaching staff we understand this aspect of youth sports as a priority with our team as opposed to wins and losses.  Comp hockey is ice time + quality coaching + encouragement = success.  For us that success will come by working on individual hockey skills in multiple learning stations, each practice will always be preplanned with direction and flow that will give our skaters an opportunity to excel.  Once we put those components in each players game then team concepts will be introduced at the end of practices where they can apply each skill set, this way the direction of practice supports our theme of each skating session and the kids understand the movements as a part of the game.

Royle Prince
907.830.2708 cellular
royle@aofalaska.com office e mail