Pond hockey a success in Standard and Gleichen

 

The biggest challenge that pond hockey in Standard has faced this year was the organizing of the 4 to 17-year-old participants.

A full roster of 21 hockey players, most of which are in the 4-6 year old range, are enjoying the game on a regular basis. Dallas Nelson, who has grown up playing hockey in Standard, is now a dad who is watching his 5-year-old son Colby grow fond of the sport and enjoy being on the ice. 

Nelson says, “it sure is great having hockey back in Standard. One of the most positive things for this year has been the growth of the kids in their skating, skills and abilities.”

Doug Blaney has helped out with the sport again this year as well as with power skating. Blaney says that it is great to see the involvement of so many parents willing to even come on the ice with the kids. 

“Standard has a fantastic facility and watching the kids it is amazing how quickly they have improved.”

The tykes team will be attending their first tournament this weekend in Rockyford.

“The future goals of course is to expand the program to bring hockey back to the forefront in the community and hopefully turn out full teams of tykes, peewees, novice etc …”, says Stephanie Nelson (Registrar for the Standard group). 

It has been great to just welcome back hockey into the community and it is another whole new generation coming out of the woodwork. 

The novice boys are coached by Doug Blaney, Dave Ellis and Steve Marshman while the tykes team is coached mainly by Jason Gauthier, Dallas Nelson, Trent Sundgaard and Jason Semeniuk.

It was in 2009 that pond hockey was brought to the hamlet of Gleichen. It began with 13 kids registered, and in 2013 there are over 80. The numbers have been increasing steadily as each year goes by and as the popularity of the program rises. 

Some kids are new to the program and a few kids decided to do different things over the winter months. There are some players who have left pond hockey to play in mainstream hockey, and others who have left mainstream hockey to join pond hockey this year. 

“The biggest challenge is probably the amount of kids we have on the ice on the Tuesdays and the Thursdays. There’s just so many kids on the ice on both those days that we’re probably going to have to change up the way we do things,” said President Cara Sheppard. 

By ‘change it up,’ Sheppard thinks they will have kids of certain ages coming in at a different time and instead of having an hour and a half time slot, there will be two one hour slots per night. 

Another issue is that some of the kids that have come over from mainstream hockey are the older kids and finding ways to challenge them can be tough. Pond hockey is for fun and is not competitive and is non-contact, which can be tough for the mainstream hockey players to adjust to when they initially make the switch. 

Gleichen pond hockey players play on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Monday is for kids 10 and older and Tuesday and Thursday are for kids aged 4-17. They are then divided into two smaller groups based on age.

There are dividers put onto the ice and for the first part of their ice session the kids are learning the skill of the game. For the rest of the time they divide up into teams and play shinny style hockey. Despite being called pond hockey, the kids do not play on a pond. The name is derived from the sport going back to its origins and the fun side of the game.