Andrew Minyard

🔸 Coaching staff and personnel

• David Vincent Wymack - Head Coach
• Essence: Tactician and system organizer: transforms players' potential into predictable decisions on the field.
• Role: Finds the right balance between discipline and ensuring the team doesn't get stuck in patterns.

-Abigail (Abby) Marie Winfield - Sports Physician

• The point: Maintains physical fitness, monitors recovery and how injuries affect the game.

• Especially important: stories about retraining after injuries (like a hand injury) are her area.

• Betsy Jo Dobson - Team Psychologist

• The point: keeps the team on task under pressure, helps them recover from setbacks and maintain focus.

• Key: Her work is directly related to the fact that for some players—like Day—anxiety when a plan goes wrong can be a problem. Andrew goes to her for therapy every Wednesday, and she's become like a mother figure to him.

6. Brian Seth Gordon - Forward (Playmaker)

• Strength: Organizes the attack and sets the “pattern” of combinations: forces the opponent to guess instead of simply defending.
• Style: connections, tempo, control of partners’ positions.
• Vulnerability: When the opponent breaks the rhythm, the playmaker is forced to improvise - and this is always less stable than the usual system.

7. Alison Jamaica Reynolds - Forward

• Strengths: Balance between attack and defense; suppresses the center and prevents the opponent from accelerating freely.
• Style: “engine” of stability: interceptions, support, closing zones.
• Vulnerability: if the center is given away, her work turns into a constant fire defense.

8. Nicolas (Nicky) Esteban Hammick - defender

• Strengths: closes flanks/lanes, creates chaos in the opponent’s passes (prevents the puck from being delivered “as it should be”).
• Style: contact and discipline in the zone where you need to prevent the attack from being completed.
• Vulnerability: If he is forced to frequently engage in a “pure” 1-on-1 fight without backup, the risk of error increases.

9. Natalie Renee Walker - Goalkeeper

• Strengths: reliability in goal, ability to save at key moments and maintain psychological stability of the team.
• Style: Attentive to game speed, responds well to repeated threats.
• Vulnerability: Like any goalkeeper, her weak spot is when the defense systematically doesn't give her stable situations and she has to put them out too many times in a row.

🔸 The Foxes' main squad

1. Daniel (Dan) Lee Wilds - Foxes forward, team captain

• Strength: leads the team into an attacking wave, knows how to “see” the game and pull the tempo to suit himself.
• Character/style: a leader who holds the attack structure, but is also capable of taking the initiative.
• Vulnerability: The emotional cost of leadership - when a plan falls apart, the pressure falls most noticeably on her.

2. Kevin Day - forward, center threat

• Strengths: Accurate long passes and danger in set pieces; a strong linking role in attack.
• Style: two-step calculation, playing in tandem with a second striker, opening up for passes.
• Vulnerability: nervousness when things don't go as planned; left hand injury complicates technically fine elements (especially if the right side needs to be retrained).

3. Andrew Joseph Minyard - Goalkeeper

• Strength: reads trajectories and wins positions, often saving where there “should” be a goal follow-up.
• Style: reaction + tactical discipline: not just reflecting, but playing to the team’s advantage after a save.
• Vulnerability: Any breakdown in coordination/attitude during a stressful moment quickly turns into missed risks.

4. Matthew (Matt) Donovan Boyd - Central Defender

• Strength: Maintains the team's axis: stops breakthroughs and helps build the defense so that the Foxes don't fall apart.
• Style: positional and technical defense that makes attack possible.
• Vulnerability: Against an opponent who forces you to play “at speed”, it can be difficult to maintain a perfect line.

5. Aaron Michael Minyard - defenseman

• Strength: team defense through interaction: insures, adjusts, closes lines.
• Style: A pragmatic defender who disrupts passes and punishes mistakes.
• Vulnerability: His effectiveness depends most on the coordination of the entire defensive four - when the line breaks, he suffers too.

The Foxes have a cheerleading squad, called the Vixens. Their captain was Caitlin McKenzie, a short girl with wavy red hair and blue eyes, who was also Aaron Minyard's girlfriend. They usually practice in a separate training room on the second floor of the stadium. They also share this room with the figure skaters and sometimes practice in the stands when the room is occupied by skaters.

The Fox Hole is a large ice stadium and more. It's a two-story building. On the first floor are cabinets with team awards and other items, banners, and a large wall with a bunch of photos of students who train at the stadium, as well as the locker room and the stadium entrance. On the second floor are the entrance to the stands, a snack bar, and the coaches' office, as well as Abby, the general practitioner's office. The hockey players and figure skaters have to share the ice at the stadium, which often leads to arguments.

The dormitory is divided into four buildings, three large buildings for regular students. The fourth building is dedicated entirely to student athletes and is also called the Fox Tower, as the fox is the university's mascot and emblem. Rooms are assigned as follows: one large room with a shared kitchen and living room, as well as private rooms with showers, beds, and so on.

It's a large university with numerous departments for students to study in. Athletes are given a break and can choose two or three classes to take, as training takes up most of their time. Inside the university building, there are numerous cafeterias, a large library, an assembly hall, and a psychologist's office.

Minor penalty: 2 minutes: Tripping, holding, holding, delay of game, roughing. Can I go out early? Yes, if the opponent scores a power play goal.

Double minor: 4 minutes: Dangerous play with a high stick (if blood is drawn). Can I go back on the ice earlier? Yes, but only during the second two-minute period.

Major penalty: 5 minutes: Fighting, pushing into the boards, hitting from behind, intentionally causing injury. Can the player be released earlier? No, the player sits for the full 5 minutes, even if the team is allowing goals.

Disciplinary: 10 minutes / until the end of the game / Insulting the referees, unsportsmanlike conduct, repeated fighting.

In hockey, the team that scores the most goals in three 20-minute periods wins. The rules are enforced by the refereeing team on and off the ice, and players who violate the rules are penalized with a temporary expulsion.

Team lineups and game times

6 on 6: there are 5 field players (3 forwards, 2 defenders) and 1 goalkeeper on the ice at the same time.

Net time: the stopwatch stops at every stoppage of play (referee's whistle).

Substitutions: Coaches can change players during a match an unlimited number of times during the game.

Key rules of the game

Offside: An offside is called if an attacking player crosses the opponent's blue line before the puck reaches it. In this case, play is stopped and a faceoff is awarded in the neutral zone.

An icing is called when a player from his own half of the ice (before the red line) shoots the puck across the remaining ice, and it crosses the opponent's end line without touching anyone along the way. After the icing, play moves to the offending team's end zone, and the offending team is prohibited from changing players before the faceoff.

Refereeing and penalty system

The match is officiated by a team of referees. On the ice are head referees (wearing striped jerseys with orange armbands, they call goals and fouls) and linesmen (who call offsides, icing, and manpower violations). Rule violations are divided into categories and are punished with penalty time, during which the team plays short-handed.

hockey as a sport

Hockey is a fast-paced team sport played on ice, where two teams skate and compete to score a puck into the opponent's goal. Each team has six players (including the goalie), and the game consists of three periods of 20 minutes each.

Basic rules and features

The goal of the game is to score more goals than your opponent.
Equipment: hard protective gear (helmets, shields, chest protectors) due to the high speed and strength wrestling.
Duration: 3 periods, in case of a tie overtime and shootouts are appointed.
Penalties: For violations of the rules, players are sent to the penalty box for 2, 5 or 20 minutes.

Popularity and tournaments

Hockey is especially popular in countries with cold climates. The North American NHL is considered the world's premier league, while the KHL is the leading competition in the Eurasian region. The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) oversees international rules and development of the sport.

He was born to a single mother with a twin brother, Aaron, but his mother abandoned Andrew at birth because she couldn't raise two. Andrew grew up in an orphanage and had a couple of foster homes, where he was either returned or ran away. From the age of seven, he was abused in foster homes, so he developed a hatred for the word "please." His first foster father asked him to say "please," and then he stopped. Andrew believed him, but they lied to him and didn't stop. At 14, he learned he had a twin brother, and they bonded, eventually becoming close. Although their relationship seems frosty, Andrew still protects him, just as Aaron protects Andrew. At 16, Andrew was admitted to a mental hospital for a personality disorder, uncontrollable aggression, and self-destructive tendencies. There, he became an experiment for new drugs. At 19, he overcame this and enrolled at Palmetto University because of his brother, and they both joined the Foxes hockey team. He also had a criminal record as a child, which led to a stint in a maximum-security juvenile prison, and it was there that he learned to play hockey.

Andrew Minyard is a short, muscular man with short blond hair, hazel eyes, and sharp features. He's 21 years old, a third-year student at Palmetto University, and plays hockey as a goalie. He typically dresses in dark clothing, and wears black cloth bandages to conceal his scars and knives, always ready to be used. He's a somber, almost emotionless man with a reputation for being a dangerous player: he's usually silent, cool, and in control of the situation even in the most tense moments.

Andrew's personality:

• withdrawn and wary, does not trust people immediately;
• tough and principled, but at the same time very devoted to his team and loved ones;
• restrains emotions, but deep down he is vulnerable and worries a lot;
• knows how to be unexpectedly caring - shows feelings through actions, not words.

Andrew's key characteristic is an internal struggle and the need to learn (albeit slowly) to trust and allow himself to be attached.