The Grand Forks Pee Wee rep hockey team is getting ready for provincials that are coming up from March 20 to 25.
Terry Corley, a parent of one of the players, says the team has been doing a lot of conditioning because the team only has 12 players, which with the two goalies means they have the minimum for two lines.
“They have to be ready, because if they have to play two games in one day type of thing, or even the one game in a day, lots of teams have picked up three lines or four lines so they’ll try to wait until the end of the game to run us out of gas.”
Corley says that conditioning is the biggest thing but the team is also working on passing and positioning on the ice – things that can only really be worked on during a game.
He says they went to Kelowna and had a game at the end of February but hopes that they can play some games before the tournament starts.
“Hopefully we’ll get a couple more exhibition games in before we head up,” he says. “The coach is working on getting some more games.”
Corley says that because they are the only Pee Wee team in the local area, it’s sometimes difficult to find opposition to play against.
Right now a lot of the teams are in playoffs and so they have to wait for them to finish before the opportunity to ask them to play.
“We don’t have playoffs because we’re the only Tier 4 team in the West Kootenays,” he says. “So we kind of got a bye out of that.”
He says the team hopes that some of the teams that they played against earlier in the year will reciprocate the gesture and come to Grand Forks.
“If we have to, we’ll try playing a Bantam team too,” he adds.
Corley says the hockey team’s fundraising efforts are also going well, estimating they are already at 75 per cent of what they need for the trip to Chetwynd and even held a dance this past Saturday.
He says it’s hard to tell if the kids are getting excited because of how hard they have been training and how tired they are when they get home.