By Joel van der Veen
DAVIDSON — More than 80 budding hockey pros hit the ice at the AGT Centre last weekend during the Cyclones hockey school, held Oct. 20 to 22.
The three-day event is organized annually by the senior hockey team, with a rotation of players leading the sessions for each of the five age groups.
The event began Friday and Saturday with age-appropriate lessons, including drills on skating and puck handling, and wrapped up Sunday with three-on-three matches.
A total of 83 players were registered for the weekend event, which marks the beginning of minor hockey season in Davidson.
Rob Warkentin, vice-president of the Davidson Junior Athletics Association (JAA), said 120 players are registered this year, which is in line with the average over the last few seasons.
The biggest change this year was the introduction of online registration through the JAA’s new website.
Previously, parents would email the association to register their players, but organizers often had to follow up to fill in the gaps for any missing information.
From his point of view, Warkentin said the website made the registration process much easier.
“It worked very well from our side, and I think most of the parents were pretty happy with it too,” he said last week. “We’ll call that a win.”
Davidson has eight minor hockey teams this year, including two initiation teams with 33 kids in total, and two novice teams with 27 kids in total.
There is also one team each for the atom, peewee, bantam and midget divisions.
The novice and atom teams are part of Fertile Valley Hockey League, while the older teams compete in the East Central Minor Hockey League.
Practices began this past week and the first game was scheduled for this past Sunday afternoon, a midget exhibition game against Clavet.
As well, a total of 31 kids, ranging in age from three to 11 years, are registered in the “Learn to Skate” program, running on Sunday mornings.
Warkentin said he’s impressed with what he called a “huge improvement” to the hockey rink lighting.
LED lights were installed in the rink and other areas of the AGT Centre this past summer. The upgrade was completed in late September.
The total cost of the upgrade was around $57,000, with half of that coming in the form of a federal government grant through the Canada 150 Community Infrastructure Program.
Warkentin and others have remarked on the change, saying it is vastly superior to the fluorescent lights previously used in the rink.
Last year’s hockey school was cancelled due to technical issues with the rink’s ice plant.