A new face is assisting the Luverne Hockey Association (LHA) to develop skills and a good work ethic in young players.
Valeriia Manchak, 25, is a professional hockey player from Kharkov, Ukraine, who lives in Sioux Falls with her husband.
She started helping the LHA program this year after visiting the Blue Mound Ice Arena.
“A friend of mine there invited me to play some night hockey in Luverne,” Manchak said.
She later met fellow hockey player Matt McClure and other LHA members.
A friendship soon developed.
Now Manchak has become an integral volunteer of the Luverne youth hockey program.
“It literally took Val no time until she was 100 percent on board and wanted to be at every practice and game,” said Bantam head coach Matt Lais.
Manchak assisted the young players develop edge skills and introduced them to dryland training routines to become better skaters and athletes.
Edge skills help players use their skate edges to bite into the ice, allowing for power, increased speed and turning ability.
Dryland refers to training without skates (also referred to as off-ice training). This can include weightlifting, speed, conditioning, agility and more mobility drills.
As this year’s hockey season began, she now teaches these two facets to bantams, peewees and individuals almost nightly in Luverne.
The players embraced Manchak and her hockey knowledge. She regularly attends their games.
“The connection that I have seen the players have with her is unreal,” Lais said. “She would spend a Sunday driving to Winona just to be part of the player development.”
It is this zeal of hockey and Luverne’s program that makes Manchak a great asset.
“Val is the only person I know of that scouts other Peewee teams before playing them,” said Peewee head coach Nick Domagala.
She skates with the players in practice, where she expects them to give their best every day.
“I love hockey. I watch it, play it and love to share my knowledge of it,” Manchak said.
She wants individual players to develop new skills and a good work ethic to be able to play college hockey and beyond.
“Players need to work hard and realize there will be ups and downs in their journey. But those with a strong character and work ethic will respond and thrive,” Manchak said.
Val, as she likes to be called, is an accomplished hockey player with a résumé and attitude well beyond her years.
Currently she plays in the PWHPA (Professional Women’s hockey Players Association) for team Adidas out of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The PWHPA unites Olympic players from Canada and the USA into the premier women’s hockey league. Manchak skated in the 2021 Beijing Olympics.
She’s also a skills development coach for the College Hockey Showcases program that allows potential recruits to be evaluated by college coaches in a multi-day, multi-game setting
Most recently, Manchak played two seasons for Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, where her team won the National American Collegiate championship for the 2020-2021 season.
While at Liberty she earned “Forward of the Year” honors in the 2020-2021 season, a year after earning “Rookie of the Year” at Liberty in 2019-2020.
Previously, Manchak played hockey for HTI (Hockey Training Institute) Stars out of Mulmur, Ontario.
Her early skating years were spent in Ukraine, where she played for the Korolevy Dnepra when they won the 2017 Ukrainian Championship.
Despite growing up in a single-parent home and in a politically unstable country, Manchak thrived.
“My dad left us when I was 2 years old, but my mom did a great job of influencing me to become a leader,” Manchak said. “She taught me that you have to fight for everything under the sun and do the best in everything you do with God’s inspiration,”
Manchak started playing hockey for a boys’ AAA program in Ukraine. This is where she was able to first travel to the United States and see her future there.
She attended Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia, where she met her future husband.