Strathmore man participates in world record hockey game for charity

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Local Strathmore man, Devin Olson, was one of the 43 participants in this year’s Hockey Marathon for Kids game, which took place in Chestermere. 

The game, which takes place every two years, ran from April 5-16, raising $1.5 million over the course of the event.

Players donned their skates to raise funds and awareness for the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation in an effort to break the world record for most consecutive hours playing hockey. 

Olson explained this was his first time joining the event after being in the stands two years ago watching it unfold. 

“I took my two daughters over and they put on such a great, entertaining event over there and with the children’s hospital, it was a big part of my life when I was a kid … when a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go in, I said yes right away,” he said. “Beforehand, it was a little nerve wracking. You start hearing a lot of the stories of the effects and different injuries and different things that come out of it. As it got closer, that was on your mind all the time, but you knew what the cause was and you kept focused on that.”

Olson explained over the course of roughly 11.5 days, players tended to have gotten an average of 16 hours of sleep. This, being in comparison to about 140 hours spent on the ice per man.

He joked when asked how one might prepare in advance, physically, to participate in such a feat, Olson simply said, “You don’t.”

Olson added players were required to stay within the arena for the entire duration of the attempt, being monitored closely by Guiness World Records officials. He recalled that players often lost track of what day it was, having only the 12-hour display clock to estimate by. 

“You just kind of went and followed your schedule, and by the time you got done your game you went and had an ice bath and did your prep thing – you got maybe an hour of sleep, and then you are back up and … stretch really well and go the nurse to get your blisters taped up,” he said. “You didn’t really have a lot of time to sleep and you found when you did sleep for that hour, you were almost more tired so a lot of the times you just stayed awake.”

The donation window remained open until the end of April, though Olson did not have updated numbers prior to publication. 

He himself was able to raise approximately $12,000 of the contributions which went towards the final total.