The St. Paul Bantam A Canadiens held the first ever Pink Heart Tournament the past weekend, and both the Clancy Richard Arena and the CAP were decked out with pink hearts galore.
“We always have a tournament, and after the tragedy on Oct. 25, the kids insisted that we wear pink tape on our hockey sticks for the tournament, and we thought we could do a bit better than that,” said Bantam A manager and tournament coordinator Cynthia Roy. “Besides just raising some funds for the families, our big thing is that we just want to keep letting the families know that we’re still thinking about them.”
Pink hearts and wristbands were sold at the tournament, which also featured a silent auction, and all of the proceeds raised went directly to the Pink Heart Campaign.
“We also had a little girl who made pink flowers and she sold those,” Roy said.
Despite the fact that the Bantam A Canadiens only has 11 skaters and a goalie, Roy says that the tournament went off without a hitch, thanks to the dedicated support of the team’s parents, who helped with everything from timekeeping to decorations.
“We’re a very small team, but obviously have big heart,” Roy said. “With that small of a team, I didn’t have a lot of manpower. The parents were just phenomenal. You need 18 to 19 parents to run a good tournament, but we managed . . . it was a team effort.”
Roy noted that every one of the eight teams at the tournament came on board with the charitable theme, but the Strathcona team went above and beyond by hand-sewing pink hearts to the back shoulder of each jersey, of which Roy said, “It was absolutely heartwarming to see that.”
St. Paul Bantam A coach Ted Graling said that while the Canadiens only managed to win one game, he was very proud of the community effort put forth at the tournament.
“The feedback we got from the other teams was awesome,” Graling said. “It was really good, every time I was shaking hands with the coaches and stuff, they were really supportive of the whole thing. The tournament organizers did a heck of a job.”
Roy noted that the spirit of the tournament will continue with other local minor hockey teams taking the same approach to their own tournaments.
“The real awesome thing about this is that there’s going to be tournaments on the next few weekends and they’re all jumping on board,” Roy said. “There’s an Atom tournament (this) weekend, and they’re doing the exact same thing.”
