Hockey day in Gleichen
Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter
The second annual hockey day in GA took place in Gleichen on Feb. 12. The pond hockey program is only in its second year in Gleichen and already there has been a huge increase to the number of kids registered. Last year there were 13 kids registered and about 40 kids taking part in the hockey day. This year numbers climbed to approximately 45 kids registered and 140 kids took part in the hockey day.
“Absolutely fabulous, with the exception of God and his sense of humour, melting the ice at about 3 p.m., it went absolutely fantastic,” said Cara Sheppard, coordinator of the program, about the day.
People came from all over the province to take part in the event, which saw the RCMP show up with their radar gun to measure the speed of kids shots. Gord Hira, Chairperson for the Hockey Alberta Pond Hockey Committee was also in attendance, along with a member from the board of directors.
“I worked with Cara last year and helped her get a pond hockey program started in Gleichen,” said Hira.
He was there to represent Hockey Alberta and show their support. He said seeing the volunteer base, and the sponsors was phenomenal. Members of the community banded together to make the day the success that it was.
“The food was good, the attitude was good, and the enthusiasm was wonderful. There were no problems, no glitches. It went well,” said Hira.
“It was a nice day of fun.”
The only real problem that presented itself was a need for more space in the girls’ dressing room. Sheppard said they would be looking into more dressing room space for next year.
“With an event that big you’re going to have little things go wrong, but as far as anything major, except for the dressing room issue, we were good,” said Sheppard.
“I mean you can always improve but it was a pretty fabulous day.”
Half of the kids participating were skating on the outdoor rink and the other half were on the indoor ice. Because it became a little slushy out, some kids were upset about getting wet. Sheppard said there were two women who had blow dryers in their cars and they were trying to blow dry the kids socks dry. One of the women took some of the wet clothes home to dry them off.
“I’m proud of everybody in our community and everybody in our pond hockey group,” said Sheppard.
Mark Lenson, coordinator for the Cochrane area pond hockey league was in Gleichen with the Cochrane pond hockey kids.
“It was good, it was a lot of fun,” said Lenson.
“The one thing that intrigued me with this is you’re throwing a pile of kids together, mixing the teams up, you don’t know who you’re playing with.”
They don’t get to play a lot of tournaments and he said it was nice to get the kids out and mingling with other kids while getting a chance to play outdoors.
Karen Hanna went to Gleichen with about 40 kids from Canmore to take part in the day.
“It was amazing. We were just blown away by how wonderful the hospitality was and what level of organization we saw and just what a great day it was,” said Hanna.
“Every single person I spoke to could not say enough about it, in a positive way.”
Hira said it was the only event pond hockey held this year that he knows of for hockey day.