Hello ball hockey families.
After a busy last weekend of playoff action, we have now wrapped up our 2024 Victoria Vipers Spring Season.
It was an exciting, action-packed and fun season overall. We started the year with a major rebrand of our league. While I know some of our long-standing members had some hesitation, the way our players embraced our new Vipers brand confirmed it was the right choice. We launched that rebrand just before our participation in Hockey Day in Canada, which provided an opportunity for us to introduce the league to a broader audience and have a lot of fun as part of that national event. We then set a record for registration with more than 500 players for our spring season. This rapid growth brought some challenges, but it also is an encouraging sign for the future of minor ball hockey in Greater Victoria.
Thank you so much to all our players. As an organization, we put in the effort because we believe in you, in your potential, and in the benefits of playing our sport. And you rewarded us with so many examples of skill and sportsmanship. It’s been a great experience to see you all play, grow your skills and grow as people this season. I hope we see many of you this fall for our drop-in season and then again next spring.
The season simply isn’t possible without the small but mighty army of volunteers who make it all happen. My sincere thanks to all the coaches, team managers and division coordinators for your dedication to our players and your many, many hours of work throughout our short but busy season. Thank you also to the many other parents who showed up each week, whether helping with scorekeeping and timekeeping or just making sure your kids were where they needed to be at the right time. I know how challenging that can be in all our busy lives.
A personal thank you from me to the other members of our volunteer executive team. Many of these folks were new to our board this year and I can’t say enough about how hard they all worked behind and in front of the scenes to deliver the season. There were some bumps and hard choices along the way, but through it all they kept their focus on making the right decisions for our players and the league above all else. Once we’ve all caught our breath a bit, we’ll soon be at work reviewing the lessons learned this season to help deliver something even better next year.
As great as this team is, some of our executive positions will be coming open for next season, including mine. So, if you have an interest in helping guide the league into the future, I encourage you to consider it and put your name forward at our AGM in the fall. It is an enormous amount of work, but it is also deeply rewarding when we see the enthusiasm and spirit our players bring to the league. I’m sure any one of our current executive members would be happy to share their experience if you want to connect with them and learn more about the opportunity to join the board. You can find their contact information on our website.
And we’re not entirely done yet for this season, as some of our divisional championship teams prepare for the upcoming provincial tournament next week, our WCC teams look toward to their tournament in July, and several of our players will be competing for national titles with Team BC in Saskatoon.
Go Vipers!
Paul Smith
President
GVMBHA
