POLAND – Step inside Poland Regional High School some afternoon and listen. On most days, you’ll hear the squeaky sneakers of basketball players cutting through the lane coming from the gym.

But on others, clickety-clacking joins the squeaking, along with an occasional dull thud.

That would be the hockey team, practicing on hardwood floors in lieu of on the ice. It isn’t the ideal situation, of course, but for many emerging teams, like Poland/Gray-New Gloucester, it’s the only way to get continuous days of practice time.

“Usually we get one practice per week, if we’re lucky,” Poland/Gray-New Gloucester coach Aaron Rand said. “This week, we only had ice time for our games, and that was it.”

To pass the afternoons when the team doesn’t have ice time, Rand schedules practices at the gym, sometimes at Gray-New Gloucester, sometimes at Poland, and still others in Minot.

“It’s a pretty unique situation we’re in,” Rand said. “Ice time is already at a premium, and next year, with the girls coming in, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

On Friday, the team met for an hour after school. The players ran wind sprints, worked on cardio exercises and ran relay races with weighted balls and sock-covered hockey sticks.

“We’ve always had a lack of ice time,” co-captain Cory Cormier said, “but this year, we’ve used our time off the ice to build as a team and really get stronger. The time has stayed the same, I just think we’re being more productive.”

Even the fun, the relay races the team ran Friday, were taxing. And the players easily worked up a sweat, with the temperature in the balmy gym 40 to 50 degrees warmer than it would have been at Robinson Arena on the campus of Hebron Academy.

There do exist rewards for all of the Patriotic Knights’ efforts.

“I think we beat a lot of teams with speed,” co-captain Gardner Lajoie said. “We have a bit more energy than most teams.”

“On the ice, we want to work on the puck-handling aspects of the game more,” co-captain Zach Arnold said. “This is more endurance, cardio. The running helps our endurance.”

The gym work also helps the team realize the value of actually being on the ice, when it does get to work out there.

“We have a lot of white-board sessions here in the gym,” Rand said. “When we get to the ice, we don’t waste any time warming up on the ice. We run and we stretch out before we go on, and as soon as we hit the ice we’re doing drills and trying to get a lot accomplished in a little bit of time.” “We’re never stopping for anything, we’re never stopping to shoot pucks against boards or anything like that,” Lajoie said. “We go from one drill to the next and everything works together.”

The team has also developed a keen sense of camaraderie, if only to help each other get through the day’s workouts.

“This year, from last year, there’s a lot more teamwork,” Lajoie said.

“We try to do a little team bonding, too,” Rand said. “Floor hockey, football, soccer, basketball, things like that. We’ve only had three practices in the last four weeks, so it’s hard to come to the gym every night without having a little fun, too.”

The fun has translated into more success. Through Friday, The Patriotic Knights were up to seven wins against just four losses this season, and sat, at last tally, in fourth in the Eastern Class A Heal Point standings.

It hasn’t come easy, but the benefits are manifesting themselves nicely.

“Of course we get tired and frustrated,” Arnold said, “but it always seems to work out.”