SPORTSwww.TheNewsHerald.comSection C Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Tigers’ recent trade: Was it a good or bad

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Tennyson Chevrolet is newest Downriver Jr. teamBy Sara PerezThe News-Herald

A number of Junior-level hockey teams in various leagues have tried to make their homes Downriver.

But every time, the experiments have failed and the teams have left.

The Tennyson Chevrolet Junior Hockey Club is a franchise that is hoping to stay and make an impact on the area.

The Tennyson Chevrolet Junior Hockey Club will play its games out of The Ice Box in Brownstown on Tuesday evenings and Saturday afternoons and Sunday afternoons starting in September.

Tennyson will be part of the newly formed Midwest Junior Hockey League affiliated with AAU, the Amateur Athletic Union.

“Our league will be on skill level with the NA3HL and will begin on Tier III levels, which are feeder programs to the USHL and NAHL, ACHA, NCAA DIV III, and Canadian Tier I and Tier II programs,” said Dan Vasquez, the general manager and head coach.

Teams affiliated withAAU sports have opportunities to play in state champion-ships as well as national championships.

“AAU now has four (hockey) leagues and PLEASE SEE JUNIOR/2-C

AAU Midwest Junior Hockey League SnapshotHere is a thumbnail glance at the new

Midwest Junior Hockey League:

• These 16 teams will make up the inau-gural season of the MWJHL: Bloomington Jr. Blaze, Cincinnati Stache, Dayton Aeros, Erie Blizzard, Great Lakes Lightning, Hartland Hounds, Holland River Bandits, Ironwood Bears, Kankakee Kingfish, Lake Erie Steel-heads, Michigan Ice Dogs, NWO Grrrowl, Rhinelander Street Cats, Soo Firehawks, Tennyson Chevrolet and the Traverse City Cohos.

• The league will be comprised of two conferences and four divisions. The Ameri-can Conference will have the North (Iron-wood, Rhinelander, Soo, Traverse City) and Central (Great Lakes, Hartland, Michigan, Tennyson) Divisions. The National Confer-ence will include the East (Dayton, Erie, Lake Erie, NWO) and West (Bloomington, Cincinnati, Holland, Kankakee) Divisions.

• The regular season runs from Sept. 14 to March 17. Each team will play 50 games.

• Playoffs will see the top two teams in each division qualify for the post-season.

• The MWJHL member teams will com-pete in the Veterans Memorial Cup playoffs for a shot at the Veteran’s Cup. The winner of the Veterans Memorial Cup will then move on to play for the AAU national champion-ship on April 8, 2013.

• Patrick Pylypuik has been named presi-dent and chief executive officer for the 2012-13 season.

• Randy Montrose of the Hartland Hounds was elected chairman of the board for the MWJHL.

• Keith Lang of Tennyson Chevrolet was named executive vice-president.

(all the teams) will be eligible to play in a national championship. We expect a for-mat to be announced prior to the start of the season in September,” said Vasquez.

The MWJHL will have 14 teams spread out from Illinois to Pennsylvania.

“Our league will consist of 14 teams as of this date: Wayne, Fraser, Hartland,

Holland, Sault Ste Marie, Traverse City, Toledo, Cleveland, Dayton, Cincinnati, Erie PA, Kankakee IL, Bloomington IL,” said Vasquez.

MWJHL teams will play a cross-over schedule so that each team will play at the in each opponent’s arena.

Despite being a new team and not yet having had a game, Vasquez and his assis-tants, Peter Flynn and Kyle Lang, have high hopes for the hockey club.

“Our goal as a league is to be able to be a viable option to the NAHL within three years,” he said. However, we do not plan on expanding outside of the Great Lakes region with a primary emphasis as a Michigan League.”

The coaching staff has a very straight-forward approach to making this fran-chise a successful one on-ice.

“Our plans are very simple,” Vasquez said. “We believe that there is no sub-stitution from emphasizing the basics, skating, passing and puck control. This is the game we believe in and that we will continue to teach and emphasize.”

Off the ice, the team wants to become part of the fabric of the community, Vasquez said.

Swimming for a causeWyandotte’s Emily Kreger among relay swimmers

battling the English Channel to raise money to fight ALSStory by Brian KalisherO

f all the creative ways to raise money for a noble cause, Emily Kreger’s plan takes the cake.

Kreger, a Wyandotte native who picked up swimming at an early age

and swam for Roosevelt High School, among other local swim clubs, before heading off to Yale to compete during her undergraduate years, will be braving the English Channel with some close friends to raise money and increase awareness for ALS this month.

ALS – Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – is more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

The group of women has teamed up with Ann Arbor Active Against ALS, a nonprofit charity whose goal is to raise funds and awareness for the devastating disease.

“I think it’s going to be pretty fun,” Kreger said. “It’s going to be a big challenge for sure.”

The idea came about when the women were training in Ann Arbor and agreed that the itch to swim with purpose was too much to overcome.

After all, when they were younger there was plenty to train for and many chances to compete. Getting a workout in the water with friends was nice, but swimming for a goal was what they ultimately strived for.

At the same time, a friend of Amanda Mercer, one of the Kreger’s teammates involved in the swim, was diagnosed with ALS, paving the way for the plan to raise money for this specific cause, and using the English Channel to do so.

“She kind of put the two causes together to raise money for ALS research and do the Channel at the same time,” Kreger said. “We decided to do fundraising through [Ann Arbor Active Against ALS] so we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel.”

As if the idea didn’t consume enough time on its own, Kreger is currently a sec-ond-year surgery resident at the Detroit Medical Center.

She taught for a while after college, worked in New York, rowed seriously for the U.S. National Team for a period of time, all before returning home to attend medical school.

Because of the time commitment and the busy lives of all involved, the team decided to swim in the form of a relay.

“We realized with our careers and fami-lies there was no way we could train and do the whole thing ourselves, so we talked about doing a relay,” Kreger said.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m just going to get on the plane, sleep on the plane, get there and jump in the ocean and start swimming. I’m really excited to do it but I haven’t been able to fit much more plan-ning than that into my life.”

The exact date of the swim is yet to be determined, but will take place sometime between tomorrow and next Tuesday.

The reason for this is because in order to swim the English Channel, it’s impor-tant to plan it around the timing of the tides.

According to the official charity web-site, hitting the water on the Neap Tides provides for a more comfortable swim when the tidal flow is slower and allows the swimmers to take a more direct path across.

Because of this, the women started plan-ning a couple years ago and were required to find a boat pilot who is available during that time.

“You have to start planning in advance,” Kreger said.

All scheduling aside, Kreger and her teammates are looking forward to the chance to swim the open water.

“We’ve all done some open water swim-ming and racing over the past several years, especially once you’re out of col-lege,” Kreger said. “There are not a lot of opportunities to do pool racing and things like that.

“It’s not as much fun anymore because there’s no way you’re going to be as fast, and you always feel that. But when you do open water, it’s a whole different thing. It just depends on the conditions. It’s a nice change.”

To make matters even more difficult, Mercer was diagnosed with breast can-

PLEASE SEE CHANNEL/2-C

Jenny Sutton Jalet, Melissa Karjala, Emily Kreger, Amanda Mercer, Susan Butcher and Bethany Williston will soon take on the English Channel in a relay swim to raise money to fight ALS.

HANK MINCKIEWICZ