Although it was touch and go for awhile, photog Carlos Gonzalez and I are back in the U.S. We got stuck at the Saskatchewan-North Dakota border for an hour Friday for apparently having “common names,” but we finally made it through customs and back to Minot in time for our flight home.

The Derek and Aaron Boogaard Fighting Camp Story will appear in tomorrow’s paper. Lots of great stuff from the moms, dads and children, like Duke Predinchuk, the father of 12-year-old Tyson, who says it’s time for kids playing peewee hockey to start “toughening up” and 16-year-old Rheal Rouault, who drove 3 1/2 hours from a town of 600 people, to learn how to “really clean up” in a hockey fight.

Derek gave us up close and personal access to his off-season training. We attended his boxing training on Wednesday, where he and his brother, who will play next season in Pittsburgh’s system, exchanged blows with their mom shooting photos on the side.

Derek’s mom, sister and brothers told some incredibly funny stories.

Derek gave us access to his daily two-hour workout regimen, which was intense. I’ll have to change my vocabulary when I say, “I’m going for workout,” from now on. No I’m not. I’m going to sweat a little. Derek’s going for a workout. It definitely gave me an appreciation of how being a pro athlete is indeed a fulltime job. He works out with several athletes, including hockey players Mike Sillinger, Jamie Heward and Garth Murray.

He allowed us into his new ginormous (it’s now a word, look it up) condo.

The boxing training, workout regimen and family stories will appear in a big story on Boogaard during training camp (which starts two months from today, incidentally). His brother, Ryan, and mom, Joanne, will star in that article because they were brilliant interviews. Carlos will also put together a real audio, slideshow on the boxing, workout, condo and lunch gathering for the Web Site that will appear with the September story.

Tomorrow’s story is solely on the Fighting Camp, which has created a bit of a stir in Regina (Carlos is putting together a slideshow that will be on the Web Site in the near future).

Trevor Lakness, who runs Puckmasters and first had the idea for the Boogaard’s to run the camp, has received several complaints from parents about the Boogaard’s teaching children how to fight.

The Drew Remenda Show on CJME has also received calls from angry parents referring to it as a “Goon School.”

Boogaard, however, says he’s not trying to teach kids how to fight or “hurt people.” He feels fighting is inevitable in hockey and he’s trying to teach these children how to defend themselves and not to get hurt.

That was certainly the objective for most the parents of the 20 kids who paid $40 Canadian to attend camp Thursday. There’s Shelley Baker’s son, Travis, who has gotten suspended twice in spring hockey for fighting and who got into a number of scraps playing tournaments in the United States.

She wants Travis to learn the right way so he doesn’t “get hurt or hurt somebody else.”

There was Jens Johnson and Brennan Smidt, who undoubtedly got the message and was there to learn how to protect themselves. But then there was Rouault, who clearly wanted to learn how to be more dominant in fights.

After seeing it firsthand, there’s not doubt these kids were safe. They were wearing full face shields, one boxing glove and had the Boogaard’s looking on and intervening whenever the kids put themselves in vulnerable positions to be hit.

They were also put through a grueling workout prior to going on the plastic sheet of ice, one to simulate how tired you’ll be if you get into a hockey fight, but also to tire the kids up so they wouldn’t have as much force in their punches.

But still, this isn’t the most politically correct hockey school in the world. I can promise you my article won’t make the NHL Today, the league’s daily newsletter slanted toward positive NHL stories.

What do you think?

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