Perth Courier, By Laurie Weir

He's ready and he's champing at the bit to get started.

Colin Glenn is the new head coach for the Perth Jr. B Blue Wings, but it's not that big of a stretch for the familiar face behind the bench.

Last year, Glenn has the assistant to head coach and Blue Wings new owner, Michael McLean.

"I'm excited... and I'm ready to go," Glenn said on July 24 during a family RV vacation in Montana. "It's a huge honour and a privilege to be in Perth and I'm really looking forward to it."

Glenn, who is an Ottawa resident, has ties to Perth as a young Shawville player himself back in his day - early '90s. "Playing for Shawville and seeing Roy Green as Perth's head coach, we were always trying to figure out how to beat them," he said. "We were wishing for a power outage... we could never beat Perth."

Now he said, it will be nice to be that "Roy Green" of the Blue Wings.

To help in his coaching career, McLean has become Glenn's coaching certification sponsor. Glenn said he's excited to be advancing in his national coaching certification with his next level - the highly regarded high-performance certification. This intensive training course is a 44 hour in-class session, along with 80 to 100 hours of theory, or homework, as he calls it, and then a mentor will follow him through the next season to see how he implements these new strategies learned.

"It's a great opportunity," Glenn said, as he's completed the class time needed, and is now on to the theory part of things. "I should have done this 15 years ago, but it's something that wasn't feasible... now the time and opportunity are here and it's a great experience. I'm thankful to Michael for being behind me on this one."

Glenn is now looking for an assistant coach. He will remain as the general manager with the team, but would entertain the idea of someone helping him in that respect as well, he said.

"We're considering two people for the job right now and when I get back from my holidays I think we'll offer one or both an opportunity," Glenn said. "They're both local guys, too."

It was just last month when McLean announced his retirement as head coach, as he admitted that he didn't want to be spending so much time on the team bus at all hours of the night, travelling to barns in Shawville and Renfrew when he had a wife and small daughter at home.

McLean will now jump into advertising and marketing full steam ahead, he said recently in an interview with this paper, while he lets his former assistant coach take the reins on a team they rebuilt last season.

"Michael and I have similar coaching philosophies," Glenn said. "It's not like we're starting the ground up again. I'm not new... they will already know me, and that's good. We've got a solid crew of about 12 guys coming back this season which is great."

Glenn said they have mailed out training camp invitations to some 400 local players to give them the opportunity to skate... "see what they've got," Glenn said.

"You know Michael... why not give to 400 kids what we can give to one. Let's offer them all the same opportunity."

It's that generosity that will cram the Smiths Falls Memorial Community Centre on Aug. 23 and 24 when the Blue Wings hold training camp. It will be mostly inter-squad games happening which will allow the coaches to see what they have on the ice.

"Ideally, we'd like to see about 60 guys, and we'll take about 20, but opening camp up to a lot more local kids is something that we've never done before."

The following weekend, the team will be doing some home and home series against Westport and Athens with Perth hosting Westport Friday, Sept. 5 and Athens on Monday, Sept. 7. On Saturday and Sunday, they will travel to Westport and Athens respectively.

The season opens Sept. 12 with Perth hosting Renfrew at 7:30 p.m.