NEWS FILE PHOTO
Sledge hockey players meet at centre ice to go over a drill in January at the Family Leisure Centre. The local group’s para hockey program will get 10 new sledges as part of a fund run by the Canadian Paralympic Committee and Canadian Tire’s Jumpstart.
Medicine Hat’s burgeoning adaptive sport association got a big shot in the arm this week thanks to a funding announcement.
The local group’s para hockey program will get 10 new sledges as part of a fund run by the Canadian Paralympic Committee and Canadian Tire’s Jumpstart.
“We were fortunate to receive this funding last year in order to help us kickstart our junior sledge hockey program and due to the huge response we reapplied this year,” said Medicine Hat Adaptive Sport and Recreation’s Tara Chisholm, who’s also the head coach of Canada’s women’s para hockey team. “We had players approaching us the entire season wanting to play and had started to run out of sleds!”
The Gas City is among 40 groups who got part of $800,000 handed out through an initiative to improve sports and recreation for children with modified abilities. Chisholm began MHASR some five years ago and saw the younger age division in para hockey grow by leaps and bounds in the past couple years. She said the association will receive about $9,000, which will buy not only sleds but help certify more coaches in the region as well.
The grant isn’t the only way the program has been helped over the years, Chisholm noted.
“We’ve been really fortunate to have great support locally especially from the Medicine Hat Hockey Hounds who have supported us right from the very start of reintroducing sledge hockey back into Southeastern Alberta,” she said. “I’d be amiss not to mention their unwavering belief in this program.”
