Thinking of Hockey

Hi OCMHA Parents and Players

I’ve struggled with how to start a message about hockey in these challenging times. Front line workers from Nurses to Store Clerks, Personal Support Workers to Food Industry Employees, and a host of others too long to list, all deserve our thanks and gratitude. The state of our loved ones in Long Term Care homes. Whole industries temporarily out of work. It all seems dramatically more important than hockey.

That said, we are all wondering when the things we cared about most will return, hockey is one of those things. What might hockey be like in the fall? It is still too early and there are too many unknowns to realistically come up with a hard plan. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, but we will have to wait a few more months to determine what that season will look like. In the meantime, all levels of hockey (Hockey Canada, HEO, and bytown district) are starting to work on a high-level framework to return to play guided by direction of national and local health authorities of course.

You can read about the work Hockey Canada is doing here:
https://hockeycanada.ca/en-ca/exclusive/return-to-hockey.

HEO has also created a Return to Play Task Force to work with local hockey associations and authorities with a return to play policy tuned to our specific needs. I’ll provide updates when they arrive.
 

For us at OCMHA, we will continue to work with HEO and the district to help form those plans.

We also have a number of housekeeping items:

 

Executive positions that will need to be filled.

· Secretary

· Director: Jerseys

· Junior Registrar

· U7 Convener (formerly IP)

· U9 Convener (formerly Novice)

· U13 Convener (formerly Peewee)

· U18 Convener (formerly Midget)

If you are interested in any of these roles, please contact me. For U7 and U11, the previous conveners have offered to help.

Jerseys:

Jerseys represent a significant asset to OCMHA, if you still have your child’s jersey, please keep it in a safe place. Some managers are collecting them via no-contact drop offs, but please, only do that if you and your team manager are comfortable with the option.

Survey:

In the next week or two, to aid in planning for the fall, we will send a survey to gauge the interest in returning to hockey in the fall.


I will provide periodic updates when more information becomes available. You can also follow us on twitter @OCMHA.

In the first couple of days after Doug Ford declared a state of emergency and things started close up, schools were closed, pretty much all public places were off limits, sports came to a screeching halt. My son Adam was in the back yard shooting another 200 shots on what was left of the backyard rink. At the time, I thought, his future doesn’t look that much different to him. He misses his friends; he didn’t miss school, he really misses hockey; but eventually, he’ll head back to school, sports will start up and he’ll be back on the ice again. In the meantime, he’s working on his shot a little bit each day. I decided, I would look at the world through his eyes for a while, keep doing what I can each day, 200 shots at time. Adam is now past 13000 shots, he, and hopefully the rest of us, will come out of this a little stronger.

Take care everyone, stay healthy, and give your kids a hug.

Dave Loehr
President, OCMHA
@OCMHA on twitter