Cool School Field Trip Packs Stands for Canes Practice

The Carolina Hurricanes got back on the ice at PNC Arena on Wednesday for practice - and it was just a little different than most days.
Around 9,000 students from 11 elementary schools in the Wake County Public School System packed the lower level bowl for the Readvolution Cool School Field Trip.

The atmosphere was jumping - literally, as the kids were prompted to do so on the video board a few times - before the Hurricanes even took the ice. Music blared from the speakers, prompting kids to get up and dance. Red and white rally towels adorned each seat and were waved frantically. Stormy hammed it up on the ice.

As the players filed out of the locker room for practice, the look on their faces said it all: this was a unique setting for an otherwise ordinary skate. The energy on the ice, then, kicked up a notch with the energy in the stands.
"Had to be," Peters said with a smile. "You don't want to let the kids down. It was really good."

The Canes worked through some typical practice drills and also mixed in a little 3-on-3 and a shootout for entertainment. All the while, the kids continued to scream and shout and dance. When they were featured on the video board, pandemonium ensued.
"I've done the school games in the American Hockey League, but I've never had that kind of turn out for a practice," Peters said.

Players tossed t-shirts to kids on their way off the ice. After practice, Jeff Skinner answered a handful of questions on the bench. One was about his favorite book. He said he enjoyed the Harry Potter series as a kid. Judging by the chorus of cheers that followed, Harry Potter was probably a popular choice among the 258,320 books read by elementary students during the Readvolution period.
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In partnership with the Wake County Public School System, the Hurricanes launched Readvolution in September, a literacy initiative that challenged 114 elementary schools to read 2,020 books and asked individual students to perform 20 minutes of reading outside the classroom each day during the first semester of the school year. 51 schools met or surpassed the collective reading goal, and Carpenter Elementary (14,292) and Weatherstone Elementary (12,932) recorded the highest number of books read.
To learn more about Readvolution,
click here
. Information on Wednesday's Cool School Field Trip can be found
here
.