HELP HMHA, HELP YOU.
I am pretty sure we can all agree that there are zero aspects of our lives that we would consider normal since March 2020. COVID-19 has disrupted, halted and changed our lives as we know them. This obviously flows into extra curricular activities such as hockey.
As a non profit organization we have put our best foot forward and made the best decisions possible to;
A) protect our membership,
B) get our young athletes back on the ice,
C) act safely and responsibly for the greater good of our community as a whole.
I would like to personally thank all 21 board members for their patience and their countless hours striving to get our membership back on the ice. This has not been an easy task at all. Ice allocation from the City was communicated to us very late in the summer. The amount of ice allocated to run our association is down roughly 40% from previous years. Further, the constant updates and sometimes changing rules made this year very difficult to plan. The safe return to play planning requires coordination across all our governing bodies; Hockey Canada, OHF, OMHA, City Of Cambridge and our local Public Health units. It took countless hours to combine all rulings together for HMHA to solidify our start of the season programming. Our plan is still coming together, but it is being designed with safety of our community and healthy fun for our young athletes as our primary priority. With support and help from our membership, this challenging time will still be a great year.
We set a date to start our season on Sept 26th with programming in place for all levels. Ice time will be reduced but costs remain the same as previous years. HMHA will have to endure extra costs such as masks, gloves and cleaning of equipment. Our yearly fundraising avenues are at a minimum due to COVID-19, therefore HMHA has only 1 avenue to sustain our programming and that is our HMHA Membership.
We originally set a date of Sept 15th for registration payment. This is being extended to Sept 21st. Please reach out and pay HMHA for your registration. In the event our season is interrupted due to COVID restrictions, HMHA will reimburse fees on a pro-rated basis. This is not just a monetary request but also a logistics request.
The sooner we have payment from our membership, the sooner we can insure our players, setup teams and rosters, and get them on the ice.
Updates via website, email and social media will be out as soon as we can regarding team/age group ice times and coaching staffs.
Nathan Hillis
HMHA President
Hespeler