Goal oriented

Victoria Sun

Friday, July 6, 2001 | 11:11 a.m.

One by one, the boys in Gina Toth's group planted themselves firmly in front of the net at the Santa Fe Station ice arena Thursday morning, ready to block the hard rubber pucks that would soon come flying at them at speeds of 50 mph or greater.

Soon after, two desigated shooters pelted the pucks at the staunch goalies as if it were Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals.

This was no exercise in cruelty directed toward the boys, but rather an exercise in the art of racking up saves.

This week at the ice arena, 14 boys and one adult participated in the Rick Heinz Goalie School, which concludes today.

"A lot of times there are hockey camps that don't focus on goalies," said Toth, an instructor for the school. "He just takes the goalies and we work on certain skills specifically for goalies.

"We show them how to perform glove and blocker saves, stick-handling drills, breakaways and net play drills."

Heinz, who played in the NHL for the St. Louis Blues and the Vancouver Canucks, has been holding the five-day camp in Las Vegas for about eight years.

This year, Toth estimates that half of the goalies, who range in age from 8-16, were from out of town.

Clint Gibbs, a 14-year-old who will attend Las Vegas Academy in the fall, is a two-time member of the American All-Star traveling team, which will play teams from Sweden, England and other nations at the end of July.

He was among the group sweating it out and trying not to get hit too hard by flying pucks.

"You get neck shots sometimes, hit in the neck," he said. "Once I got hit in the stomach because the pad doesn't reach all the way down my chest ... and you can get hit in the back of the legs."

Yet according to Gibbs, there are plenty of perks to being a goalie.

"You get more action," he said. "(Other) players take shifts and sit down but I'm in the game the whole time.

"I can see the whole ice from where I'm at."

Like many goalies, Gibbs takes pride in the fact that he can keep his team in the game even though plenty of pressure rests on the goalie.

"The only time you get abused is when you mess up," he said. "If one flies by me, if it's an open shot and I have a view of it, I know I should have made that save."

Toth stressed that there are many skills a goalie must have that get overlooked.

"To be the goalie on a hockey team, you've got to be the best player and the best skater," Toth said. "A lot of times coaches put their worst kid or their biggest kid in there, which is a mistake.

"The goalies have to work hard. A lot of people tell me that it's not normal to want to get in front of a small, hard piece of rubber flying at you."

Gibbs was converted to a goalie when he was 8 and his youth hockey team didn't have a goalie so he volunteered.

Others, like 8-year-old Dakota Yamka of Henderson, become goalies for more personal reasons.

"I just thought the pads were cool," Yakima said. "Hockey is the sport I have the most fun in."