Prince George came together to duke it out for street hockey supremacy this weekend, but also to raise funds for healthcare in the north.
This happened through the Spirit of the North Healthcare Foundation’s first ever Hockeyfest.
“We were really thrilled with the community support,” said Spirit of the North CEO Aimee Cassie.
“I think for a first time event, the energy, the environment, the way everyone really rallied behind the event was fantastic.”
Cassie noted there were 50 teams of seven players, but a lot of community members and family came to watch as well.
“Honestly, it took us by surprise the amount of people that were at the event and braved the weather,” she said.
“We got rained on all-day Saturday, but we still had quite a strong showing for the event.”
The event helped raise funds towards supporting an MRI-guided breast biopsy program at UHNBC, a new service the Foundation is working on.
“This should be able to wrap up funding on that program,” she said.
“We are in conversation and working with Northern Health to get the service launched, lots of moving parts to that, but we’re really excited with the outpouring of support we received, and very grateful for it.”
Moving forward, Cassie said they hope to continue to bring the event back, looking at how they can tie it into regional cancer care.
“There’s a couple of big pieces that we definitely have on our radar that we would like to see added to Northern B.C.,” she said.
“We really believe that this event will be instrumental in adding those pieces to the north.”
Cassie said the Foundation was able to gain a few ideas from the event.
“We had a number of teams participate from across the region, which was great to see, and so we are looking at it moving forward as being a bit of a regional draw,” she explained.
“Increasing the number of rinks that we’ve got, looking at changing the date slightly, we’ll work with our local hockey community to make sure that the dates align properly with minor hockey and the hockey season.”
Cassie said there were a number of people who said they wanted to participate, but they were away for hockey tournaments of their own.
“We’ll look at when is the best time for our hockey community to make something like this work,” she said.
She added there’s others who have seen the event, and are now interested in participating themselves.
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