A letter from the Quesnel Kangaroos was part of the agenda at Tuesday night’s North Cariboo Joint Planning Committee meeting that was held at the Rec Centre.

The help that the senior hockey club is seeking includes support for things like a reduction in advertising costs and ice time.

Tyler Coleman, the Team President and General Manager, says hosting this event is an expensive venture…

“Right now with Coy Cup our budget is sitting roughly just under 60 thousand dollars to operate the tournament. That involves costs for travel to and from the tournament for all the teams, hotels, food, ice time, referees, their hotels and accommodations.”

Coleman says the team does have some money but is counting on outside help for a lot of it…

“We’re sitting roughly at about 17 thousand dollars that we have available to put towards the tournament itself. The rest of it would come from ticket sales, potential sponsorships and any support we can get from the city and surrounding communities to make this function properly.”

The Joint Planning Committee, while saying that policy prevents it from waiving the cost of the ice, did vote in favour last night of having staff work with the Kangaroos to find a viable option to help them out.

Coleman was happy with that…

‘Absolutely. Our biggest goal in coming to this meeting was really just to see that we can get the City and the Regional District to jump on board and say we’re willing to work with you and make this happen. We want to a positive and lasting relationship with the area. We all live here, we’re all part of the community, we’re a community team, we want to be able to have the City of Quesnel and the CRD to say we’re behind you and we want you to succeed as well.”

Other requests were to have sponsorship signs on the glass behind each of the player benches, to allow banners on the arena from last year’s championship season, and to have access to the road side TV screen for advertising the Coy Cup.

The next North Cariboo Joint Planning meeting is set for November 12th.

The Coy Cup will take place from March 24th through the 28th at the West Fraser Centre.