Hello BMHA Members,
We are looking forward to getting everyone on
the ice even though our season is going to
look very different this year. Working under the Return to Play Policies from
the OMHA and also the City of Hamilton is proving to be difficult but certainly not insurmountable. We can make
this an enjoyable experience for all of our
players and get them back in their skates and getting the physical exercise they all are looking forward to.
We need to all work together to make this a
good year and it will take patience and a lot more planning on all of our parts to make hockey work during
this pandemic.
Here is the information we have at the moment;
At this point it does not look like the City is going to open Beverly Arena, they are looking at securing us ice in Dundas or Ancaster. So we do not know which days of the week we will get ice or the times that we will get yet. Dressing rooms are still not open to ice users yet.
The OMHA will only allow teams to a maximum of 9 skaters and 1 Goalie so that when we move to Stage C we will be able to play 3 on 3 hockey games. We do not know when we will get to that stage. We are also to stay in a Bubble of up to a maximum of five teams that will play in an interlock style schedule. So for example if we have three Bantam teams we could be paired with two Dundas teams and these 5 teams will play each other each week.
We are looking at a season from October 1 to February 28.
The City has a policy that we have to follow of 20 people maximum on the ice at one time (this includes players, coaches and refs) and a maximum of 50 people in the arena (including the 20 that are on the ice). This is why we have to keep track of who enters the arena and it will be limited to one parent or Guardian per player. Unfortunately siblings will not be allowed as we would be over our limit. The control of who enters the building is due to contact tracing for if there is a Covid positive case then we need to report all that were there on that day to the Public Health Office. Please keep this in mind before paying your fees as this is out of our control and make sure you are able to have a support system in place so that you can adhere to this policy.
It is with great disappointment that we will not be able to offer our Pre-School Program this season. These are our 3 and 4 year olds in the learn to skate program, unfortunately due to the need of one on one help with this age group we are unable to adhere to the City’s requirements for this age group. Our apologies and we look forward to seeing all these new hockey players on the ice with us next season.
Unfortunately we will also not be offering a Juvenile program this year as there is no Rep hockey allowed.
We have been given the go ahead to collect registration fees and we have to put a deadline of
September 8 to pay your fees. This will allow us to have a concrete number of players to determine how many teams we have in each division and to work on creating the hockey bubble for when games are allowed to start. Any player who has not paid by September 9 will be deleted from registration. You can pay your fees by e-transfer to
[email protected] and this account has auto deposit so no need for a security question. If you would like to pay by
credit card please contact Vanessa at
[email protected] also if you are struggling to pay in full by this date please contact Vanessa.
When you registered on-line you had the option of printing your receipt so you know what amount is due, if you didn’t print it off just log back into your account to see what your balance is.
Thank-you! Your BMHA Executive