Building relationships within the Grande Prairie community was a focus for the Grande Prairie Storm Jr A hockey team in 2023.
In her first year as Executive Director of the hockey team, Nicole Menzies says it was extremely important to the organization that the team be part of the Grande Prairie community and the community is part of the Grande Prairie Storm team.
“Grande Prairie is truly such a great place to live, work and play in the instance of the players. So it is really important to us that we are giving back in as many ways as possible,” she says. “It is important to us that the Storm have a community feel, and I think that everything the Storm are doing out in the community is sort of adding to that.”
Some of the ways the organization has been working on building those community relationships include visiting and working with local schools, along with working with some of the Grande Prairie minor hockey teams. Also in October, the Grande Prairie team held a “Hockey Hooky” game where ControlTech gave away 1,800 tickets to the Friday afternoon game. Menzies says because the game was at noon, students got the opportunity to skip school and come watch the game instead. She says the only way to describe the energy in Bonnetts Energy Centre during that game is “unbelievable.”
“The kids were so excited, they were great little fans. The really cool thing is for so many kids this was their first opportunity to come to a Storm game or really any kind of live game. So just getting them in the building and letting them have that experience was so much fun.”
Menzies says so far this season the team is seeing regular season ticket holders come out to support the team along with a whole bunch of new fans.
“We are seeing them come back again and again, which is really cool to think that we are kind of reaching a new sector of hockey fans, and giving them something to be proud of in their community.”
The Storm returns to the ice on December, 29th when they host the Sherwood Park Crusaders to a pair of back-to-back games at Bonnetts Energy Centre.