The new Chris McMillan Development Centre in Grande Prairie is almost ready to officially start welcoming players. While construction is finished and some Grande Prairie Minor Hockey Association teams have already started using it, President DJ Golden says they are still waiting on furniture.
“[The] construction phase is complete so the room is done we’re just kind of going through the motions of picking the proper furniture for it. We’re looking at a desk style that will fit three or four players at a desk… We should hopefully see that stuff here within the next few weeks.”
The idea for the new room was first brought up last October. It was built inside the Coca-Cola Centre in the old site of Ernie’s Sports Experts and was named in memory of Chris McMillan, a hockey parent who passed away in January 2006. In McMillan’s funeral announcement, he requested all donations to go to GPMHA and the room was funded through $50,000 of those donations. Golden puts the total cost of the room somewhere in the $65,000 to $70,000 range.
Once the room is fully finished, teams will be able to use it for team building, meetings and for reviewing game tapes and doing game planning. Golden hopes this new room will be used as a place to develop both the players and coaches.
“This gives us the opportunity to facilitate doing mental training with our players. It’ll give our coaches an opportunity to bring the players into the room and do some development stuff off ice in regards to technical stuff. I think it also gives us an area where we can start bringing in some more facilitators to educate our coaches.”
Golden is hoping to have the room fully finished and ready to go by the end of March.