The Bob Park Ice Breaker tournament, which in the past has kicked-off the Whitehorse broomball league’s season, is going international.
The Yukon Broomball Association has announced Whitehorse will be hosting the first ever North of 60 broomball tournament, a co-ed event open to local teams as well as those from Alaska, NWT, Nunavut and Northern BC.
“This tournament is based on a fun platform to help promote the game of broomball and to get new players to come out and try it for first time,” wrote Yukon Broomball Association president Milford Allain in an e-mail to the News. “The focus is to get more player interest in this fun winter sport.”
The tournament will take place November 13-15 at the Canada Games Centre and the Takhini Arena with space available for a maximum of 10 teams. So far, organizers have accepted two entries from Yellowknife and one from Homer, Alaska. The entry deadline for outside teams is October 1, followed by the deadline for local teams a week later.
“In the future the idea is to have the Northern Cup in different places, i.e. Yellowknife, or whoever wants to host it,” said Scott Smith, of the Yukon Broomball Association.
“Broomball has been a fixture here for 20 years. It’s a very social sport - our focus is to make it fun.”
Looking farther into the future, as part of a countrywide program instigated by the Canadian Broomball Federation called “Broomball for Fun” or BF2, the sport is now being offered in local schools in Whitehorse. In fact, Whitehorse is one of only 12 Canadian communities to receive equipment from the federation as part of the program.
“It’s going through the schools and are teaching children the sport and how much fun it is,” said Smith. “It’s a cost-effective alternative to some of the other sports offered.”
On October 8 and 15 the Yukon Broomball Association will be holding two meetings to gauge the interest in sending local teams to compete in the world championships being held next year in Innsbruck, Austria.
For more information, or to find a team to play on, visit www.yukonbroomball.com.
“We have a list of new players and returning players that are looking for teams,” said Smith. “So there’s lots of opportunity to play.”
Contact Tom Patrick at
tomp@yukon-news.com