Thirteen Indigenous hockey teams travelled to the South Cariboo Recreation Centre to compete in the Aboriginal Hockey Tournament.
“It was a success, everybody was happy,” said Bruce Baptiste, one the organizers of the tournament. The other being his wife, Shannon Woods.
In total, there were 13 teams competing with roughly 16 people per team, three more than last year’s tournament. The furthest team came from Fort St. John. All the teams came from within the province.
According to Baptiste, the competitiveness of the tournament is what made it such a good one this year. He said the competition was stronger this year because of Aboriginal youth hockey getting stronger, with more players playing at rep level.
“Seeing the kids just having fun was I think special, playing hard and having fun, you know. Can’t ask for anything better than that,” said Baptiste.
The only challenges in organizing the tournament were when a team dropped out and needed to be replaced. Baptiste said they went through several schedules before they got it figured out, the first time in the tournament’s history.
In one case, two midget level teams wanted to drop out due to travel reasons but one decided to stay after all forcing a schedule change twice. A bantam team didn’t have enough players, so their games had to be rescheduled.
“Everything fell in place, regardless,” he said.
The tournament is planned to happen next year again.
One change will be the addition of a new division called the Midget Juvenile to build up the competition.
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