What's New for the 2024 Season
As the 2024/25 hockey season approaches, the Canmore Minor Hockey Association is busy working hard on some exciting new initiatives for the coming season. So exciting, that we just had to share them with our membership. Read on to get a sneak peek at things in store for the upcoming season. A reminder that registration will be open from June 1-30, 2024. Mark your calendars!
More Skills Development
Last season, CMHA decided to pilot an enhanced skills and player development initiative. This was extremely popular with the membership and resulted in many of our players making great strides forward. Given the success of the pilot, CMHA is eager to continue the emphasis on skills development, and continue to offer opportunities this season. As with previous years, CMHA will make these opportunities available to all players, at a minimal cost. How are we able to achieve this? Read on to find out.
Volunteer Bond
CMHA believes very strongly that the game of hockey should be affordable, and accessible to everyone. For this reason, CMHA is always reluctant to raise registration fees. Compared to several other associations in Alberta, CMHA is among the cheapest when it comes to registration fees. What’s even more impressive, is that CMHA offers skill development opportunities to all players at no additional cost. In almost any other minor hockey association, any skills development, even powerskating, is an additional fee on top of registration. The fact that CMHA can offer these opportunities, and still keep fees low, is something we’re very proud of!
However, there is a caveat. Offering a high-quality hockey program, that provides these types of skill-building opportunities, does come at a cost. Rather than raise registration fees to cover all of the costs, CMHA instead chooses to raise fees minimally and fundraise to cover the rest of the cost. Events such as tournaments and casinos are crucial to this fundraising effort. And to make these fundraising events viable requires a large volunteer effort. Unfortunately, for too long, this volunteer effort has been carried out by the same “10%” of individuals. To address this, CMHA has decided to implement a Volunteer Bond for the 2024/25 season, to better spread the volunteering load among more of the membership.
You can find out all of the details on our website at:
https://www.canmorehockey.org/content/Volunteer-Bond
Registration Fees
As mentioned previously, CMHA does whatever it can to keep registration fees as low as possible. That said, periodically, it is necessary to raise fees minimally to keep up with inflation, and rising costs of renting ice and insurance, along with other administrative overhead. The last time CMHA raised fees was back in 2018. In 2024/25, CMHA will be raising fees by 10%.
Compared to other minor hockey associations in Alberta, CMHA fees are among the most affordable. And what’s more, most of them do not include any skills development in the registration cost as CMHA does. Sampling fees from minor hockey associations across the province, we found that CMHA fees are 20% lower than the average.
Operations Manager
While CMHA may be a small association in terms of numbers, it’s a mighty one in terms of the quality of the program we offer. The reputation of the minor hockey program in Canmore is something that many other associations look up to. Things such as our skills program, our players' success, and our tournaments' popularity are all examples of this. However, running such a program is not easy, and CMHA is now at the point where this is a full-time job. For this reason, we’re thrilled to announce that CMHA has hired Erin Walsh as our full-time Operations Manager to oversee all of the day-to-day operations of the association. Formalizing the Operations Manager role will continue to ensure that things run smoothly and professionally so that CMHA can continue its mission of offering a world-class minor hockey program that is affordable and available to any child in our community who wants to take part.
If you have been part of the CMHA program over the past decade, you know Erin. She has served as Ice Coordinator and Registrar for many years. Erin has always gone above and beyond those roles, far too often as a volunteer, to fill gaps in CMHA operations as required. We can confidently say that nobody is more qualified for this position than Erin, and we’re fortunate and grateful that Erin has accepted the position!
