2025-26 Season

Our Ice Scheduler

Our Ice Scheduler Chris Kalata is entering his 8th year scheduling ice for RAHA.  Chris also previously spent 6 years on the Board before becoming the scheduler and also was Team Manager for all of his sons 11 youth hockey seasons.  

General Overview

As we enter the 2025-26 season we unfortunately have to say good-bye to The Pond which closed March 1st, 2025.  The owner and the landlord could not come to an agreement on a new lease and you now have your 12th Fitness club in Rosemount.

Our primary facility is the Rosemount Community Center Ice Arena which contributes around 40% of RAHA’s hours for our 26 traveling and 12 IP Teams for this season. RCC also hosts the 4 Boys and Girls High School teams as well as the District Figure Skating Club (Icettes), so basically 43 users fighting for ice at our Home Facility.

RAHA has contracted ice at Inver Grove Heights Veterans Memorial Ice Arena and the New Woodbury Ice Facility which accounts for over 800 additional hours to supplement in our ice shortage for the season.  We also will  have some miscellaneous hours at other facilities (Hastings, Lakeville, Apple Valley, Burnsville and Ramsey County Arenas).

Rosemount is growing and our community desperately needs more ice.  We are one of the largest associations (if not the largest) in the State of Minnesota with only one full size ice sheet.  The city has already determined that an expansion at RCC is not feasible, so a second facility would need to be built.  What can You Do to help?  Contact the Rosemount City Council and let them know that it’s time for another Ice Arena in Rosemount!

Timeline of Scheduling

RAHA has around 40 teams to schedule each season and although having your entire season on your calendar prior to the start of the season would be nice and convenient, it is not feasible.   Our scheduler uses online software to layout the master schedule and then will publish out to team calendars in chunks when completed and ready.  This will happen at different intervals during the season usually on a month to month basis.  The ice schedules will roll out a little slower in October and November while we wait for all levels to start their seasons and for the final game schedules for each team to be sent over from District 8.  Traveling team game schedules come in at different timelines between Oct 15th and Nov 15th and is the main hold-up in publishing practices for Dec, Jan and Feb.  Once the traveling team game schedules are received, our scheduler has a picture of the remaining available practice ice for the remainder of the season and the scheduling will accelerate for both Traveling and 8-Under teams.

Most Association schedulers for larger associations like Rosemount schedule in a similar manner.

Ice Distribution and Balancing

With our ice situation forcing our teams to have to travel to other communities for practice, our ice scheduler puts in the extra time making sure teams are balanced between RCC, IGH and Woodbury.  Bantam, Peewee, Squirt, 15U, 12U and 10U teams can expect 2-5 practices per week  Our 8-Under teams practice Saturday’s and Sunday’s. 

The amount of ice available for scheduling each week will vary based on the Rosemount and Simley High School game schedules and the Inver Grove Heights and Woodbury facility weekend scheduled tournaments.    Due to the variance, our traveling teams volume of ice may not be consistent from week to week.  Ice balancing is done for an entire season, not a specific week or month and the total practice hours will balance out by the end of the season for each skating levels teams.

Early AM and Late PM Ice Times

During the course of the season ALL TEAMS will share in the 7am practices.   These will be balanced across each level.

Late evening practices have been defined as any event starting at 9:00 PM or later. The bulk of these practices are assigned to the Jr Gold, Bantam/15U and Peewee/12U teams and will be balanced out across the season.  Due to the nature of scheduling, the Squirt and 10U teams may end up with a few late practices across the season, but these will be minimized as much as possible.

Q. Why are most of our practices at IGH or Woodbury Ice?

A. With 26 Traveling Teams and 4 HS teams, a lot of the scheduled ice times at RCC are used for League Games, so many of the hours are taken for game schedules leaving a limited amount of ice at RCC for practices.