As you read this, the ice at arenas across Oakville sits freshly groomed but unused. If things had gone according to plan this week, the Oakville Hornets Girls Hockey Association would have hosted the last day of games in one of the province's largest girls hockey tournaments.
Tournaments are always a fun time for kids and parents to get together and make some memories, as they stay in hotels, playing meaningful games and building friendships that will last a lifetime.
All of these factors weighed heavily on the minds of the Oakville Hornets Board of Directors as they decided on Wednesday that it would be the right time to shut down their operations for the 2021 calendar year while announcing that the annual Harvest Classic would be cancelled. Omicron outbreaks occurred amongst at least 16 of the teams scheduled to compete this weekend.
The decision wasn’t easy but based on the evidence, and it was the right one. Case numbers publicly and then within the teams scheduled to compete steadily rose. Hornets' President Mike Turczyniak and the board of directors needed to act fast.
“We called an emergency meeting midday on Wednesday and said we need to make a decision here.”
Only the day before, they had sent out an email confirming the tournament was still going ahead as scheduled, but any teams who wanted to withdraw would be given a refund.
They were still tweeting about a special guest appearance by former Olympian and Gold Medalist Geraldine Heaney earlier on Wednesday. She was scheduled to appear throughout the weekend selling autographed copies of her new book.
Initially, word started to trickle in that one team had suffered an outbreak, then another, and then finally, by the time Wednesday rolled around, it was apparent to the tournament staff that pulling the plug would be in the best interest of all parties involved.
The Harvest Classic is a big tournament, over 140 teams were scheduled to take the ice, and after losing the majority of the 2020 season last year, it was a tough call, but the right call, “we’re talking about 4-5000 people coming into Oakville to play in a tournament, it’s not just the players but everyone else who’s involved, The last thing I want is for someone to miss Chrismas for a tournament. You know, we’ve got some senior citizens who volunteer.”
Hotels managers, volunteers, referees, and countless others would need to be coordinated in a massive effort to keep the tournament alive, but from a humanitarian standpoint, the price of getting it wrong was just too high.
As it turns out, a large number of the players and coaches who had contracted COVID-19 the previous weekend were all at the same tournaments playing against each other.
“We did some research, and there were tournaments in Waterloo and Whitby; I guess that's where the outbreak happened. Then we were like we’d better check what teams we had at that tournament, and then cross-referenced the teams that are coming to our tournament to see what was going on.”
While there was the obvious disappointment from all parties involved, there hasn't been much blowback from parents regarding the cancellation. However, the announcement to shut the league down a week early did ruffle some feathers, but cooler heads have prevailed as at the end of the day, a single game lost is easy to make up when things start back up in 2022.