Barrhead Minor Hockey Association (BMHA) is looking to have another good year helping children learn life skills and have fun.
That is what BMHA president Tyler Fitzpatrick told the Barrhead Leader two weeks before the start of the regular season on Oct. 25.
“We have had a lot of interest in our program this year with a lot of kids registering,” he said.
Unfortunately, Fitzpatrick said the interest or number of registrations wasn’t uniform across all age groups.
“In some levels, we didn’t have enough. Some ,we had too many. It was a challenge that’s for sure, but when you add in the kids who came from neighbouring communities, we ended up with some fairly good numbers and the ability to have multiple teams for most age groups,” he said.
At the youngest age group, the five and six years old, Initiates, there will be two teams.
“I think we have something like 32 kids,” he said.
For Novice players seven and eight years old, there will be two teams, while the number of registrations for Atom, players nine and 10 years old, warranted three clubs.
Peewee players 11 and 12 years old, will ice two teams, something Fitzpatrick said they hoped to be able to do at the Bantam level (players 13 and 14 years old), but unfortunately, they didn’t have the numbers.
“We ended up moving a couple of kids to Midget and a couple of players left to play AA in other associations, so we ended up having 17 skaters and two goalies for one large midget team,” he said.
On the midget side (players from 15 to 17), the BMHA will once again be fielding two teams, the Renegades and the Steelers, with the latter being the stronger of the two.
Fitzpatrick noted the teams have been on the ice since Oct. 4 and currently are in the tiering process.
In Alberta, minor hockey teams are tiered according to skill level from Tier I, the highest level to Tier VI the lowest.
Fitzpatrick said associations and leagues (Barrhead plays in the Northern Alberta Interlock League) do their best to tier their teams by looking at historical data, such as where the team was tiered the previous year and the strength of the kids coming into the program.
However, before tiering is finalized, teams play a series of preseason games to determine whether a team’s initial placement was correct.
As for what impact Barrhead’s new the Western States Hockey League (WSHL) Junior A entry, the Bombers, has made, Fitzpatrick said, on the logistics side, not much.
The only impact on the BMHA will be the scheduling of the occasional Steelers and Renegades home game.
“As when any other user group gets added, there are some challenges finding ice time, but they have done a good job at minimizing the impact,” he said.
