Red Earth hosts Aboriginal hockey

Following a one-year hiatus, the Red Earth Aboriginal Minor Hockey Tournament was finally able to celebrate its 10th anniversary.

The tournament, which began in 2000, was supposed to have its decade-long anniversary in 2009. But organizers were forced to cancel that event due to the widespread concerns of H1N1, which saw the cancellation of numerous sporting events.

Since some clubs still expressed an interest in having a tournament in Dec. of ’09, a 13-team Prince Albert Aboriginal Minor Hockey Tournament was held in its place. Since that event had a different moniker, the Red Earth tourney had to wait 12 months to officially celebrate its 10th year anniversary.

The two-day event was staged Dec. 28-29 in Prince Albert. Though the event is held in Prince Albert, the majority of the organizers are from the Red Earth First Nation, located about two-and-a-half hours east of the tournament site.

“They don’t even have a rink on their reserve,” said Leo Arcand, one of the event organizers. When it began, the event was called the ‘Owen Head/Orville Nawakayaf Hockey Tournament’. It was named after a pair of Red Earth residents who died in 2000, Head, who was a minor hockey goalie, and Nawakayaf, who was a minor hockey coach. The event was then renamed the ‘Red Earth Aboriginal Minor Hockey Tournament’ in 2007.

Though the tournament has also included participants from Alberta and Manitoba in previous years, this year’s event only featured clubs from Saskatchewan. A total of 22 squads took part, competing in four age groupings.
The largest division was the peewee one, which attracted seven entrants. Also competing were six atom, five novice and four bantam squads. Organizers had also wanted to stage a midget division. But that was cancelled when only the Red Earth side entered this category. The Red Earth organization, however, did send four other teams to the tournament, one in each of the four divisions.

Though none of the Red Earth clubs managed to win an A championship, both their peewee and bantam teams captured B division championships. For their efforts, both teams were presented with championship banners.                                                                                                                                                   
Meanwhile, because the event was celebrating a special anniversary, organizers decided to give out 10th-year anniversary jackets to all players from the four teams that captured an A championship.

“We don’t present them on the ice because we don’t want the kids that don’t win them to feel too bad,” Arcand said. “So we just give the jackets out in the dressing room.”

Though he was relatively pleased with the number of clubs that took part, Arcand was not thrilled with something else. The fact he was scrambling to finalize divisions even after Christmas Day. Two atom and a pair of bantam squads were added after Dec. 25.

“It’s tough on me because I have to make the draw before Christmas,” Arcand said. “And then I have to co-ordinate with all the teams so they know when their games are.”

Arcand also had to deal with the uncertainty of which First Nations would be sending representatives to the tournament.                                                                                                                                                                  
“I thought we’d have some Onion Lake teams,” he said. “(Officials from Onion Lake) were saying how they don’t have many tournaments to go to. I was surprised they didn’t come down.”