Alex Eisen/MDN The United States National Sled Hockey Team practices at Maysa Arena on Thursday during the first day of a four-day training camp in Minot.

The United States National Sled Hockey Team has made Maysa Arena its training hub this weekend. The reigning three-time consecutive Paralympic gold medal winning squad (2010, 2014 and 2018) has been holding a three-day training camp in Minot, which started on Thursday and will go through this evening.

The sessions are open and free to be viewed by the public and has provided a unique opportunity for those in the community to watch these world-class athletes compete, especially for local athletes in the Prairie Grit Adaptive Sports program.

“This is pretty much a once in a lifetime opportunity for us here,” said Drew Hanson, the Prairie Grit director. “It’s amazing it came to fruition and came so quickly. We have a bunch of support from the community and we will have a bunch of people out here watching them. We are really excited to have them here.”

The U.S. Sled Hockey Team is being led by Bottineau native David Hoff. After being an assistant coach on the team’s gold medal run in the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, Hoff is serving as the team’s head coach for the first time.

“It’s been really interesting,” Hoff said about becoming the head coach. “It’s my 30th year at Bottineau High School, teaching and coaching the high school team up there. I’ve been the head coach all of that time and the last couple of years I’ve been the assistant for the national team. I’ve really enjoyed that. I say that from the standpoint as a head coach, I knew what I wanted out of an assistant coach. It was an opportunity for me to be that guy. I didn’t have all the final decisions and that was OK. I worked more with individuals, and not necessarily the whole team part.”

While Hoff enjoyed his time as an assistant, he jumped at the chance to be the next head coach.

“I’m at the point of my career that I’m eager for the challenge,” Hoff said. “I’m just in on a lot more things now. Even something like this with the media. As a high school coach, if we were playing Minot High, you’d come in and interview me at the end of the night. When I was the assistant coach, I had none of that responsibility. If this was a game day, I would have just been dealing with individuals. So, now I have to get back into some of the responsibilities that come with being a head coach.”

After practicing Thursday night, the team went up to Bottineau on Friday to spend some time with the school and community. They returned to the ice Friday evening for another practice in Minot. The team will have two more practices today at Maysa Arena from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

“Our guys come in from all over the country to get around 4-6 practices, depending on the location and availability of the guys getting in (to the location of the camp),” Hoff said. “We just selected our team back in July and have had about two and a half months of nothing going on. Really, this is a chance for us to see where guys are at. Out of the 17 guys we had on last year’s squad, 12 of them are back and we have five new guys in the mix right now.”

This is the second training camp the team has had this month after playing in Las Vegas last weekend (Oct. 4-6). This is also the first time the team has ever trained in North Dakota.

“This being a non-Paralympic year, we would have a training camp once a month,” Hoff said. “October turned out to be a little different with us having a couple training camps going on this month. It’s a little busier, but we don’t have some things later this winter.”

Bonding and get better isn’t just reserved for the U.S. National Team. Prairie Grit is also embracing this opportunity to the fullest.

“We have a lot of youth, some adults as well, but I think this is huge for the youth to have someone to look up to on Team USA,” Hanson said. “We are just two years into our program, so we are still in the infancy of it. This is a huge opportunity and not one that often comes around, so we are going to take advantage of every second we have with this team. Learn from the best.”

Alex Eisen covers Minot State athletics, the Minot Minotauros and high school sports. Follow him on Twitter @AEisen13.