Welcome to the 2025 - 26 hockey season!
Hello Middleton Youth Hockey families!
Welcome to the 2025-2026 hockey season! We’re excited to announce that registration is now open for all age levels for the 2025 - 2026 hockey season. This email contains a ton of exciting updates and information on the new hockey season, so please read carefully.
2025 - 2026 Registrations Links:
Black Puck (Squirts, PeeWees, Bantams)
*Please note: To register with Middleton Youth Hockey, you’ll need a Crossbar account, and your skaters will need annual USA Hockey registration.
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Cross-Ice Age Level Director Still Needed
While we’ve managed to fill our other board positions with talented and hardworking folks, Middleton Youth Hockey is still in serious need of someone to lead our 6U Cross-Ice program this winter. Currently, Danny Schneider is feeling a bit overwhelmed serving as Red, White & Blue ALD, de facto Cross-Ice ALD, and managing the club’s website. Please consider donating your time and leadership to some of our youngest skaters (and Danny) this winter. For more information, please email president@middletonyouthhockey.com.
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Good Neighbor Fest & Parents’ Night Out:
We’re looking forward to an exciting year that kicks off with Good Neighbor Fest the weekend of August 22nd. This is our club’s largest fundraising event of the year, and our beverage tent helps us to keep registration fees as low as possible for our families. If you haven’t yet signed up to volunteer, we’re still looking for help, so please sign up. Come out and spend time with other hockey parents, raise substantial funds for the club, and check off your volunteer hours before the season even begins!
Our outgoing Communications Director, Maureen Mauk, has worked tirelessly to kick the hockey season off on a high note with a Parents’ Night Out - Hockey Happy Hour on Friday, August 22nd, from 6 to 8 pm at our Good Neighbor Fest beer tent. Details will follow soon, but this will be a great opportunity to meet other hockey families and win awesome prizes, including door prizes, a 50-50 raffle, a hockey stick raffle, travel mug specials, and more!
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Big Changes to Learn to Play, Cross-Ice, and Red, White & Blue:
Intending to provide scheduling and financial flexibility to our hockey families, we’re excited to announce changes to the programs for our youngest skaters this winter!
Learn to Play will be offered as three sessions:
Back to School (Sept/Oct),
Early Winter (Nov/Dec), &
Late Winter (Jan/Feb)
We’ve worked with the Dane County Hockey League to split our Cross-Ice and RWB seasons into two sessions, before and after the holiday break. This will give our multi-sport athletes flexibility and provide two opportunities for our Learn to Play skaters to graduate to Cross-Ice hockey at the start of the Cross-Ice season and again at the New Year. Our Cross-Ice and Mite skaters will have the option to skate in Session 1, Session 2, or the full hockey season (but not the option to graduate from Cross-Ice to Mites during the season).
**Perhaps the most exciting news is that we’ll be offering your brand-new skater’s first blue puck (LTP, X-Ice, or Mites) session completely FREE! Bring your youngest athletes out for a free session and tell your non-hockey friends!
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Black Puck Development Camps & Tournaments
Our Squirt, PeeWee, and Bantam levels are excited to offer optional Development Camp sessions, beginning at the end of August, to “knock the rust off.” These sessions are not part of evaluations or a required pre-season team event; they are intended to give our players access to ice time and an opportunity to get back into hockey shape before evaluations and the regular season. The black-puck seasons will officially begin with try-outs and evaluations starting in mid-September.
Additionally, we are excited to provide our Squirt, PeeWee, and Bantam teams with four tournament opportunities each to showcase their talents around the state. Our new ice scheduler, Kelsey Cushman, has been working diligently to place our teams in great tournaments. Our black-puck skaters will have opportunities to gain valuable hockey experiences while competing against different teams.
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Volunteers Needed this Season
As many of you know, the Middleton Youth Hockey Club only functions due to the hard work and energy of our volunteers. Our parents, coaches, managers, board members, and other unpaid volunteers are what keep quality ice hockey happening for Middleton kids.
Beyond required hours, we're always looking for more help to improve our programs, the quality of education & competition we can offer our hockey players, communication with our hockey families & community, and more!
We understand that your families are super busy. We know hockey is expensive. We understand that you work, run a household, care for family members, volunteer elsewhere, and so much more! If you can find a few extra hours during the hockey season (or off-season) to help us improve Middleton Youth Hockey, we would love to know more about you! Email president@middletonyouthockey.com or learn more about volunteering here.
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Volunteering Deposits
To keep our club, hockey games, and teams functioning and our fees to play hockey as low as possible, each family (at mite-level and above) is required to volunteer 7 hours for single skaters or 12 hours for multi-skater families. The volunteer deposit is $200 for one skater and $400 total for two or more skaters. If your family has 3 or more skaters between Mite and Bantam levels (meaning 3 or more sets of volunteer hours), please reach out to me at president@middletonyouthhockey.com to receive a discount code to enter when registering the 3rd skater, which waives the third $200 volunteer fee.
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Evaluations
Below (and attached), you’ll find information and schedules for the upcoming development camp practices and evaluation (Try-outs). This announcement is being communicated to all of last season’s families via this email, but please share, broadcast, forward these dates and details to any new families who may be interested in playing Middleton Youth Hockey. All are welcome! There will also be Facebook announcements and we encourage you to share.
In September, we will be in touch with more information about evaluations including when evaluation jerseys will be handed out and the evaluation format. We will also soon be able to announce the Goalie-specific Evaluation Dates. If there are specific questions about evaluations, you can feel free to contact me at: president@middletonyouthhockey.com and Will Pangman our ACE (Association Coaching and Education Director) at ace@middletonyouthhockey.com.
Goalies
Goalie Evaluations are meant for those players who are registered to play goalie at least 75% of the time. The times of those evaluation sessions will be released soon. In addition to the goalie-specific tryouts, goalies should also attend the skater Evaluation sessions based on their age group (e.g. Peewees, Squirts, etc.). More detailed information for goalies will be provided soon.
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10K Pucks Challenge
Our off-season 10K Pucks Challenge is going strong and you can still create a player account to get your skater practicing shooting pucks in the offseason at home. Please see the 10k Pucks information page for more information on how to participate.
You can also go to the HockeyShare (https://www.hockeyshare.com/10k/player/) player page to log your shots.
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Additional Information
I am sure there may be some questions going forward and if you have a question about a specific level, here are the Age Level Directors who are there to help support you:
Learn-to-Play (Initiation) - Nate Raulin: LTP@middletonyouthhockey.com
6U Cross Ice - VOLUNTEER NEEDED: crossice@middletonyouthhockey.com
8U Red, White & Blue (Mites) - Danny Schneider: mites@middletonyouthhockey.com
10U Squirts - Melissa Kagerbauer: squirts@middletonyouthhockey.com
12U PeeWees - Jeremy Graveen: peewees@middletonyouthhockey.com
14U Bantams - Brandon Victor: bantams@middletonyouthhockey.com
U18 Co-op - Marc Renault: u18@middletonyouthhockey.com
We are looking forward to a great 2025/26 hockey season filled with fun, learning, and friendship! See you at the rink,
Brian Juech, President, Middleton Youth Hockey