Winter sports season comes to sudden end for some in the northeast, stretches into spring for others

A figure skating season that stumbled several times because of COVID lockdowns, came to a sudden end for the Valley East Skating Club when they found out they'd have no ice to skate on.

Greater Sudbury decided last week to close down its arenas, with the latest spike in coronavirus cases.

Vice-president Heather Fleury was hoping for at least a few more weeks of skating this spring. 

"So it was a little disappointing to see that they're just closing the arenas altogether," she says. 

"The kids have put in so much effort this year just to get where they're at and now it's just done."

Fleury says the club wasn't able to run the CanSkate learn-to-skate classes that many figure skating organizations use to finance their other activities and will be starting next season in a "financial hole."

As of Wednesday, the health unit is prohibiting team sports in Sudbury and Manitoulin, but most cities and towns in the districts have taken the ice off their rinks anyway.

That pretty much ended the season for three Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League teams in the area, which had started playing games again at the end of February.

Commissioner Robert Mazzuca says teams in other areas, such as Timmins and Cochrane, are continuing to play.

"It's kind of hard to classify it as a season. We were fortunate. Other leagues in the province were not doing what we were able to do," he says.

Mazzuca says in total the league lost over $1 million in revenue this winter, but he says all teams are expecting to come back next year, kept alive financially by player fees that cover about one-third of all money the clubs bring in.

He says despite the unusual year, those players are definitely getting their money's worth, with dozens of scouts watching NOJHL games online and others, including many from the National Hockey League, attending games in person this winter.

The Ontario Hockey League has yet to announce whether it will try to play this spring, while the Sudbury Five are now waiting until next fall with the scrapping of the National Basketball League of Canada season. 

It's been a surprisingly good season for Timmins Minor Hockey.

President Laurent Gilbert says registrations are up over 400 for the first time in years and if the city allows them to keep playing through May, the two months of play lost to lockdown will be recovered.

"It's going great. We recently got approval to play some five-on-five hockey, so we're back to playing as close to conventional hockey as we can," he says. 

Several cities and towns in the northeast are deciding to keep their arenas going into the spring, past when they would normally be shut down.

Kirkland Lake town council voted Tuesday night to extend skating season to the end of April at a cost of about $14,000.

Terry Piche, the technical director of the Ontario Recreation Facilities Association, worries that some councils will be pressured into making poor decisions by hockey associations and skating clubs that can wield a lot of political power in cities and towns. 

"Really they are just renters of our facilities and as much as they'd like to dictate how things are going to happen within our buildings, we have to balance the needs of the user and the non-user," says Piche, who is based in Chapleau. 

"They're going to be financially fatigued in regards to covering some of these costs."