By Ryan Laverty /
A comfortable pair of flip flops may get you in the door, but it’s going to take a team of fast skates to get much further than that at this year’s Alberta Champions Cup hockey tournament.
Now firmly entrenched as Western Canada’s preeminent icebreaker tournament of the Summer hockey season, this year’s Champions Cup promises to be just as good as the six that preceded it.
With teams hailing from Kitimat to Saskatoon, Vancouver to White City, the tournament will feature a potpourri of talent from all corners of the Western provinces. All totaled, the tournament will welcome some 245 teams in 12 divisions.
“It’s a full-year process planning for this tournament,” said tournament coordinator Jamie Graham. “Basically, we take the month of July off and then start all over again. It is a huge amount of work, and lot of the credit has to go to Melanie Hawkes. She really is the one who puts this together every year.
“It’s come quite a long way in the last six years.”
To put things into perspective, last year’s event featured a total of 180 teams playing a grand total of 60 games on 29 sheets of ice split between Edmonton and Calgary.
The 2010 edition will bump those numbers up by 25 percent, calling on the use of some 36 sheets. And to think, the whole thing started with a six-team round robin six years ago.
Graham said it’s an indication of just how much the idea of hockey summer hockey
has blossomed.
“For a lot of the elite level players, I think spring-summer has been a real breath of fresh air for them,” said Graham. “It gives them a level of competition and the type of ice time that they really need to develop their skills.
“I think it shows that people are realizing there may be an alternative to the status quo.”
As Graham alluded, the idea of spring/summer hockey has historically been reserved for the marquee players from winter leagues. Those teams could legitimately profess to be of AAA caliber.
With the boom in spring/summer enrollment, organizers from the Champions Cup have had to rely on coaches’ own assessments in order to tier the competition properly.
“Whether they call themselves AAA or not, we know that not every team is going to be at the same level,” Graham remarked. “We want every team to have a good experience, so it is important for coaches to be honest in their evaluations of their teams.”
With the growth the tournament has shown, it would seem ‘good’ doesn’t begin to describe the experience at the Champions Cup.
With full 60-minute stop-time games at every level, as many as six games in three days and medals for every participant, it’s easy to imagine organizers hitting their goal of 300 entrants in 2011.
The tournament runs from April 30 through May 2 in both Calgary and Edmonton.
A few slots are still available in some divisions. The cost is $1,950 per team.
For more information visit www.albertachampionscup.com. |
