Interview with Northstar Christian Hockey Director Rick Randazzo

Undefeated upstarts out of Alexandria, MN seek to develop players both on the ice and spiritually

I spoke with Rick Randazzo, Hockey Director at Northstar Christian Academy, about his upstart hockey program based in Alexandria, Minnesota. Rick, originally from Buffalo (NY), played hockey at Army where he was a top scorer before coaching at the Naval Academy and eventually starting the hockey branch for Fellowship of Christian Athletes, an interdenominational Christian sports ministry. That led to starting the Northstar Christian Academy in Alexandria, Minnesota just over a year ago.

The hockey staff at Northstar Christian Academy includes U18 head coach John Olver, a Michigan hockey alum who has decades of coaching at the top levels of the game as well as Tim Jackman who spent over a decade playing pro hockey, much of it at the NHL level. We had a great, lengthy discussion about the hockey program, what they are about and plans for the future, which includes expanding to the U16 level next year. The U18 Northstar Christian Academy Knights are undefeated (25-0) this season and are currently ranked #11 in the country.

How did it all start? 

My wife and I started the hockey version of FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) in 2008, in 2011, my family and I - my wife, my five kids and myself - the seven of us started what we call the fifty state, fifty city tour, where we sold our house in Raleigh (NC) and our cars, and we travelled in a 15-passenger van for four and a half years running hockey camps in all fifty states. So we spent thirty days in Maine in August of 2011, then we moved to New Hampshire, then Vermont, then we just kept moving across the country. Took us like I said four and a half years, we ran adult hockey camps, youth hockey camps, coaches seminars in all fifty states. 

While we were doing that, the idea came across during FCA summer camps where we would have these teams of players around the country that we’d meet in Boston and we’d do the Chowder Cup, after a few years players were like “we need to have a full-time team!”. The idea came out of that, that when we finished the fifty state tour, we could have a hockey academy. And we actually had five different locations that had showed interest in bringing FCA hockey to start a hockey academy. 

Where else were you thinking?

We had talked to the Buffalo Sabres, I grew up in Buffalo, New York, so we had talked to Cliff Benson who is an executive with the Sabres, then Alexandria which is where we ended up, Fargo, North Dakota… Sioux Falls, South Dakota, those are the first four that all had meetings [with us]. At the end, Minneapolis, Minnesota jumped in, there’s a pretty large church here that is a basketball powerhouse in the Twin Cities and they talked about starting hockey with us.

But the catch was we needed our own facility. We wanted to team up with a group of people, or a person, that said we believe in what FCA hockey is doing, we believe that we can use the sport of hockey to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we knew that when we said that, the amount of prospects for our team goes from 100% to a certain lesser extent because some people feel that religion and hockey should be separated. And that’s fine, but we wanted the opportunity to build a place where Christian hockey players and non-Christian hockey players could come and be exposed to Christian beliefs, Christian values, and play at a high, high level, have great coaches, great resources, and be a part of this FCA hockey academy.

So in 2013 we evaluated our different proposals and we selected Alexandria, Minnesota. They had promised that they would build us a facility that we would then have priority for ice time, we’d have offices, we’d have a Christian school, we would have what we needed to build out our dream. We accepted that offer from them, we had similar offers but this was the best offer, the right offer for us at the time. 

That’s super interesting. Obviously the big draw is for Christians but for a non-Christian player, I assume you don’t change things up. What would you say the non-Christian hockey player is getting out of the experience at Northstar Christian? A hockey program with a focus on moral teachings and spiritual development, a kind of integrated approach… or how would you describe it?

As you know, hockey families will go anywhere.  Florida players will play in Massachusetts, guys are going all over. Families send their kids all over. We lived in Raleigh, North Carolina and when you became, you know, a sixteen year-old, you went to prep school in Massachusetts, that’s just what everyone does there. So we knew there’s this need for character development, for leadership, spiritual development, and you know, traits.

Our fundamental principles, we call them the ten traits of a godly man. What makes a man a man, and those traits, you can substitute a ‘godly’ man for a ‘real’ man, or a ‘great teammate’. A great teammate accepts responsibility for his actions, a godly man accepts responsibility for his actions. Or a real man. Accepts responsibility for his actions. So we have these ten traits, they’re all biblically based, but they are just as strong if you substitute godly man for great teammate. A great teammate sacrifices for others. Has self-control and discipline. Those traits have become the bedrock of our program.

We have a $9 million complex that is state of the art. We have a $55,000 dollar shooting bay. We’ve got a $20,000 dollar Senaptec hand-eye coordination sensory integration tool that the New York Yankees use. We have a full-sized indoor training facility, we have a full weight room, our locker room is state of the art, touch screens and stuff. We have our own team bus. We have our own training room with trainers… we have things that college teams don’t have. So we have a high, high-level of resources.

Then we have a coaching staff with a head coach who has coached nearly 40 years at the professional and NCAA Division 1 level. [Head coach John Olver]’s coached in major juniors, been an American league GM, head coach, both of his boys drafted in the 2nd and 3rd round in the NHL. He could coach anywhere and he’s chosen to coach here at Northstar Christian Academy. Our head skills guy is Tim Jackman, played ten years in the NHL, has chosen to move here and live in this small town in Alexandria to work with these players on a daily basis. He’s turned down NHL opportunities to be here. 

And that’s because they’re all signed onto the whole integrated, Christian hockey academy approach?

Correct. 

It’s an interesting, really unique asset, having this faith aspect there to help with their development not just as a player but as a person. The discipline and commitment that comes with that, it might be something a player really misses out on somewhere else. 

Yeah. There are so many challenges, you throw in social media, you throw in what these kids are being hit with… fourteen year olds with commitments -- now they can’t -- but a year or two ago…

A lot of them still have agents...

Yeah. A lot have advisors, the pressures that are on them… so who are they getting their direction from? Parents are so invested, they’re spending $25,000 a year on their kid, by the time he’s eight he’s got personal trainers, all this stuff… our motto is every player here knows that he’s loved. They know that we love them and appreciate them. I don’t know another program in the country that has the resources and has the coaches and has the mentality, and treats their players the way we treat our guys… additionally, we have a $3.5 million dollar school with 24 hockey players in it. That’s it.

Next year, we’ll double it, we’ll have a U16 team, but we’ll have teachers, we have between part-time and full-time employees, ten people for 24 players. So every player knows where they’re at, they grow, they are held accountable. #10 on our godly traits is a godly man has the hard conversations. So they’re held accountable for their actions, as we are as coaches. It’s an extremely unique environment, three hours on the ice every day. Four to five hours in the classroom. And it’s shown in our results. Last year we started 6-7, we ended 41-11-6. And this year we’re 25 and 0. We’ve ramped up the schedule from this year to last year. 

I saw you just got moved up from the NAPHL Prep division to the Tier 1 High Performance division.

Yes. So why would a player send their son here? We have three pillars, we say, spiritual development, academic advancement and athletic excellence. All of our students are monitored on a daily basis. All of our classes are done online but we have Liberty University, which is one of the top Christian universities in the world, and our students take classes through them or our students take a program called Alpha and Omega, another Christian online curriculum. So we have two very good curriculums and then all of our students are monitored, all five hours we have instructors in the classroom assisting them.

So is Northstar technically a boarding school?

Yes, we have players from twelve different states, and we billet ‘em this year, but the plan, I’m looking right here in my office at the plan for the dormitory. So we’re hoping in a year and a half we’ll have our team dormitory built. 

Did you consider joining the MSHSL (Minnesota High School)?

Well, we’re on the ice three hours a day, start in September, this year we’re going to Europe… Russia, Sweden and Finland in April, so we’ll play 74-75 games plus a trip overseas. So we’re non-eligible for Nationals, so we can’t go to Nationals even though we’re the 11th ranked team in Tier 1 right now.

There are some amazing athletes that play Minnesota high school hockey, I know in our town, we have a player whose a good hockey player but he’s also the captain of the football team, captain of the baseball team, right? You can’t do that if you come to Northstar. We have one sport and you play it the whole time. Our model is to develop hockey players, that’s what we’re doing with the training and what not. There are players in Minnesota who play multiple sports and will still play in the USHL, college, or what not. The other high schools, a lot of the top high school players are able to play before the season in the Elite League. That’s not our model either because our model is purely a development model.

Everyone says they’re a development model, we’re saying the development model is an hour and a half of skills, every day, and then a team practice for an hour and a half. So if you play fifteen, twenty games, whatever you play in the Elite League, sixteen games, how much are you developing? You don’t have practices. You have a coach, play with all-stars, other good players, but you’re not developing through repetition, practice, pushing yourself through certain drills. That’s what separates us. Focused attention is what our words are to describe it. Today I had 12 forwards on the ice for an hour, and I just worked through four steps to the cage, worked for an hour, with two goalies, on in-tight scoring. That’s the model that we have here. It’s just unlike most other places out there.

Is [USA Hockey Nationals] something you’re trying to be eligible for? 

I think our record, who we’ve played, would justify us being able to go to Nationals, but that’s out of my control. 

You’ve kind of alluded to what a day is like for a Northstar Christian hockey player but could you just go through a typical day for me? What’s a Tuesday like?

Yeah, our day starts at 7 AM in the chapel. We have a forty-five minute chapel every day. Either led by a coach or by a player. We worship, the first ten-fifteen minutes a couple worship songs, a hymn, whatever it is. And our guys, I wish you could be out here for it, our guys are arm-in-arm, it’s special, then they jump out on the ice. We have the ice from 8-9:30, we have it whenever we want but the schedule is [typically] 8-9:30, and then 10 to noon they’re in class, noon to 1 is lunch, then they’re back in class from 1 to 3.

Now, for most of our guys, they do not need 5 hours to complete their schedule, so we’ve got the weight facility, we’ve got the Senaptec machine, we’ve got the dry-land areas, we’ve got the shooting bay, so there’s workouts scheduled in there based on school. And then 3:30 to 5 is our team practice. So that’s it, they’re usually home 5:30 to 6. They might take a sauna, something like that. We have a huge team sauna in our locker room that fits pretty much the whole team. It’s special, the guys don’t want to leave at the end of the day, because they all get along so well, they go home, have dinner with their billet families, and then… basically have to be in their home by 9, lights-out by 10. Most of them are in bed long before that.

Well you’re on the ice and working most of the day…

Plus we’re up early. They’re up at 6:10, 6:15, gotta drive to campus and be here.

How is your team, prospects-wise, this year?

We’ve probably got ten to twelve players that we think are Tier 2 or higher [junior hockey] players this year, I say that are ready to go next year, then we’ve got three ‘03s playing U18 that could still be playing U16 this year, one of them was just named NAPHL defenseman of the month. He’s probably the only ‘03 that was awarded by the NAPHL, Jacob Napier, from Buffalo, New York. He’s a really good player. 

Who are some of your other players that have done well this year?

We have some players that we believe are Division 1 players, we don’t have any committed players right now, and we’re excited, our captain from last year is starting to have some college visits. It’s just a matter of time before we have our first, and our second and our third commit, those types of things. A lot of our guys were players people passed over and then they came here and now they, through a tremendous amount of hard work, have gotten better and better and better, now they’re ready to play at the higher levels.

It’s one thing to be Mount St. Charles and start your first year taking blue chip players from all around the country to play for you, that’s great, but unfortunately, that’s not how we started. We started, many on our team were AA players and we didn’t cut anyone this year. Everyone who played on our team last year was still on our team this year. So we just built those guys up and I think that’s really the power of our program, because we’ve made a promise to these players that we’re going to make you better, as high as you can go. We’ve added, you know, our recruits this year are better than our initial recruiting class, and every year we’ll add higher caliber players.

Yeah, it’s going to snowball.

Yeah, so those things are going to make it easier. Last year the Gentry team whipped us through two games to start the season, we got beat 12-5 or something, we were like ready to shut it down. But, we started 6-7 and we ended up 41-11. 

Well you stick with it, you never know how far you can go.

Right, right. They bought in. And our team plays four lines. Just 1-2-3-4. 1-2-3-4. Every line goes so hard, it’s hard to pick out [a player], but we do have some key players.

Are there a few guys other than [Napier] that you can single out?

Yeah, Ben Strinden from Fargo, North Dakota is our leading scorer this year, he’s an ‘02, and right now he has opportunities to play anywhere in Tier 2, and most likely Tier 1 next year. He’s just a natural goalscorer, tremendously tough kid that can just really shoot the puck, plays through any amount of pain, great kid. Two great defensemen that are really, really good, both ‘02s, one is Jakob Stender, he’s playing in the North American league tonight, from our hometown of Alexandria, one of two players from Alexandria. [Stender] decided to come here as a forward, we moved him back as a defenseman.

Then Luke Anderson from St. Cloud, the team he left (St. Cloud Cathedral) won the (single-a) state championship last year. He left there to come here, this year he’s our captain, last year he was an assistant as an underclassman, he’s a senior this year. Where Jacob Stender is a smooth-skating, rushing defenseman, Luke is not as end-to-end, but really has a power shot, scored some huge goals, scored one in overtime the other night. He can skate but he’s just a steady, steady, smart defenseman and he makes plays. He’s a key leader for us. All three of these guys are Division 1 prospects. 

We’ve got a few other players who will for sure make the jump to junior hockey next year. Jens Richards, was a first-team all star last year in our league (NAPHL), he’s a goalscorer, big strong kid, he was on the first line last year, both his line-mates graduated, so you’ve seen a drop in his numbers, but he’s just working with new line-mates and he’ll be right [up] there [in scoring]. He’s a tough, big, power forward that I think will transition to the next level really well. 

Talon Sigurdson, another 02 from Sartell, MN has really exploded this year.  His hockey IQ is off the chart and he can score, pass and defend.  Tyler Ryder (‘01 defenseman) is a co-captain and a key leader to our defense.  Brody Lucas, Truett Olson, Anthony Menghini, Chad Cousineau, Zach Barros and Ben Oakland are all getting interest from Tier 2 teams right now. Additionally, both of our goalies have been really good. We’ve got an ‘01 goalie Colin Soderholm, from Monticello, MN who is ready for the NAHL, our other goalie Camdyn Barber is from Portland, Oregon, an ‘02, he could be in the USHL or NAHL next year.

Thanks for reading and to Rick for taking the time to do this interview.