Hockey Alberta grants Wheatland’s request

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

Upon the completion of last season, Hockey Alberta did their annual reviews of each division and came to the conclusion that they wanted to have two peewee double-A teams in each recruitment area.
Wheatland Athletic Association was concerned because as there is no ice anywhere in the county to field a second peewee double-A team, and it took two appeals to come to an agreement with Hockey Alberta to omit them from the change for one season.
“When it comes down to it, how we went about it and it was my concern all the time was sourcing enough ice in our draw zone,” said Murray Brown, Wheatland Athletic Association’s president. “In the west end of our draw zone, Strathmore is very fair with ice and it turned out I couldn’t source no ice in Chestermere or Indus.”
After the first appeal was denied by Hockey Alberta, Brown decided to bring all shareholders in from the draw zone and to go back to their associations to see what ice times were available to them, but it was still not enough for a second peewee team.
“They would have been heading to the east side of the county and a lot of the associations don’t allot for ice until the end of September,” said Brown. “We would’ve been in limbo on where we’re going to force this ice until the end of September and my argument, ‘it’s too late’ because all of our ice times have to be submitted to the league and there was just none available at the time.”
The Wheatland Athletic Association will not have to have to follow any of Hockey Alberta’s stipulations but the priority over this winter will be to secure ice for the second peewee team and will be working closely with Chestermere and Indus.
Hockey Alberta’s Senior Communications Manager Brad Lyon said the work that Wheatland Athletic Association did between appeals was enough for the committee to make the decision on giving them a year from now to find ice for a second team.
“With regard to the second appeal, what made the difference there was between when they submitted their first appeal, and when that had been turned down, they certainly had gone to the surrounding minor hockey associations to see about available ice time to house a second team, and were unable to do that,” said Lyon.
The Hockey Alberta committee recognized and understood how much work the Wheatland Athletic Association put in and accepted the request brought forth.
“What Hockey Alberta has been telling anybody that’s involved with double-A hockey is that we know that there will be some situations that require some tweaks to the model for the first year,” said Lyon. “That may require some understanding and some shifting of the guidelines and I think this would be one of those situations where it did not quite work as anticipated.”
He added that this will have a minor effect on the league, limited mostly to shifting in the scheduling.