Skate the Lake enters 14th year

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This article was published 06/02/2020 (2295 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of Westman’s biggest winter events is making a return to Minnedosa next week.

The 14th annual Skate the Lake pond hockey tournament is taking place on Feb. 15-16, with dozens of players and corporate sponsors already signed up to help raise money for the community.

According to event organizer Tanis Barrett, their 2019 competition managed to attract more than 40 teams and generate $12,000 for the Minnedosa Minor Hockey Association, leading to the installation of a new digital scoreboard in the fall.

This year, Barrett and the rest of her volunteers are hoping to exceed that amount while also maintaining the palpable sense of fun and excitement that has been a signature of this event since it debuted in 2006.

“It’s always been about community for those of us that are volunteering,” she said. “Because we think it’s an awesome way to spend the weekend and giving other community members the chance to come out and play is always something we’re looking for.”

Barrett told the Sun on Jan. 28 that she has been helping organize this competition since the very beginning, back when locals Dan and Gaylene Johnson were brainstorming new ways to raise money for various community projects.

Taking inspiration from similar events they witnessed across the country, the Johnsons eventually approached Barrett and her husband Wes with the idea of putting together a giant pond hockey tournament to help raise funds for the community daycare.

“And as fellow minor hockey parents we said ‘hey, it sounds better than selling chocolate bars,’” Barrett recalls.

Once the Minnedosa Community Childcare Co-operative finally opened its doors, Skate the Lake switched its focus to raising money for local hockey programming in 2010, which attracted a whole new crowd of youth participants.

In 2018, Barrett and her fellow organizers decided to broaden the event’s appeal even further by adding a curling rink to the proceedings, branding this new attraction as “Rock the Lake.”

“It’s stick curling, so you don’t have to get down there and worry about your knees getting scraped or anything like that,” she said. “So I think it appeals to a wider age group as well.”

Last year, the organizers went one step further by setting up a section of the lake for those who wanted to play crokicurl, a hybrid sport that combines elements of curling and the board game Crokinole.

Barrett assures the Sun that all these different activities will be on deck for this year’s festivities, including other long-standing favourites like the Minnedosa & District Recreation Commission’s chili cook-off challenge.

On the fundraising side of things, Skate the Lake has raised $93,500 to date for Minnedosa minor hockey, including $10,200 for the community daycare and $5,000 on behalf the local beach enhancement committee.

Barrett said their success in this department is due to the repeat participants and sponsors who have been taking part in this tournament from the very beginning.

“We’ve got guys who are business owners and are sponsoring this event that started playing hockey with us when they were 20 or 21 years old,” she said. “So we must have been doing something right for the last number of years.”

Team registration is still open until Friday. To find out more information about this year’s Skate the Lake event, visit their official website at skatethelake.ca.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

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