A local hockey tournament won't feature any local teams this weekend, leaving some Orillia parents frustrated.
The Orillia Minor Hockey Association (OMHA) is hosting the Orillia Terriers Family Day Tournament this weekend for house league players in the U13, U15, and U18 divisions.
Sarah Dean, a parent of four house league players ages 13, 12, 10, and 9, says the OMHA never registered local teams through the Ontario Minor Hockey Association for the tournament. That means they can't participate.
“This is super disappointing as a parent,” she said. “It makes no sense.”
Dean says having Orillia teams in the tournament could have made up for the lost time when issues with a heat exchanger and, later, a legionella outbreak, caused Orillia’s Rotary Place and its two rinks to be closed from October to late December.
“They have failed miserably,” Dean said of the city and OMHA. “It’s such a big hockey town and I don’t understand why it’s so disorganized.”
Tournament organizer Mike Borrelli says when he reached out to Orillia teams about participating in the tournament the interest was low.
“Nobody (from Orillia) reached out to me to ask if they could get into the tournament,” he said. “Of course we want the teams to play.”
Borrelli says Orillia teams could have participated if their coaches came to him and asked to play, but then they would have needed to get proper certification and roster their team.
Borrelli says OMHA administration didn’t register Orillia teams as house league teams this year due to the "bad start with ice time.” Instead, they were registered as "local league" teams which is considered to be like an all-star team of house league players, which wouldn’t allow for them to play in this weekend’s tournament.
“For weeks and weeks some of these teams didn’t have certified coaches,” he explained, citing the rink closures. “They didn’t have certified coaches to run a team in the tournament.”
If teams were interested in playing in the tournament, Borrelli says he could have helped them a month ago by getting them properly registered with a travel permit that allows you to play in tournaments as a house league team.
“I would have taken 100 teams if they were willing to go through the procedure the right way,” he said. “Unfortunately, nobody looked into that.”
This weekend, 13 teams will skate in Orillia from Saturday until Monday. Teams are coming from as far as Windsor, Kingston, and Ottawa, Borrelli said.
