A Letter From Your GVMH Executive
To the members of Grand Valley Minor Hockey,
It’s time for change. Change isn’t easy and it’s almost
never fun, but change happens, and it’s happening to us.
We need to change the way we think when it comes to hockey in Grand Valley.
Over the years I have noticed an attitude in this town, an attitude that the people who left were the ones causing the problem. I was guilty of it too. We would come down on the parents that took their kids elsewhere to play hockey. It was as if they thought they were too good for this town. It was their fault that our team struggled. It was their fault that we didn’t have enough players.
We need to change the culture.
We need to embrace these kids. Encourage our parents. By all means... go to try outs in Arthur, Orangeville and Shelburne. Please... go to AAA.
And please... if you don’t make it, come back.
We’ll do our best to develop our kids into great hockey players. We will provide them with the instruction, the ice time and the support they need, so they can leave town and try out next year.
And if they don’t make it, we’ll be here to welcome them back again.
We may not be able to offer the same as some of the larger communities around Grand Valley, but what we do have is an arena with prime ice time available for our local teams, not to mention the extra ice and developments sessions. We will continue to place our teams in the best local leagues available. We have great volunteers, coaches, parents and kids. You'd be hard pressed to find better value for your hockey dollar than right here.
Per capita we produce more quality young players than anyone around. Our Mite and Tyke players get more ice than any of our neighboring centres. Once Novice hits, and Rep hockey is introduced, we’ll lose a few kids. And that’s a good thing. It means we’ve started them on the right path. And they started as Twisters.
The bigger centres that surround us will soon come to know that when they see the kid at tryouts with the green and black socks, that they had better take a look. They’ll soon find out that the kids from the Valley are no joke.
We will continue as a development centre. We hope to have teams at every age level, from Tyke to Juvenile. And we will ice competitive, fun local league teams.
We’re not going away. We’re just changing. So, please, go try out. Wear your Twisters socks. We’re behind you. We’re rooting for you. And if you don’t make it, we’d love to have you back.
Wishing you all the best,
Your Executive at the Grand Valley Minor Hockey Association.