Hockey Canada came out with a statement last night, and BC Hockey followed suit, that it was suspending all hockey operations until further notice because of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Tyler Coleman, the President of the Quesnel Kangaroos, says it is obviously disappointing news…
“It makes sense, it’s tough to hear though because we’ve had so many months and hours and hours and hours of effort going into preparing for this and to have it pulled out from under you a week and a half out it’s a little disheartening.”
Coleman says there was really no way to simply postpone the tournament…
“The ice is comiNg out in the next three weeks. We’re going to be moving into the summer time schedule for activities sat the arena, lacrosse and what not.”
Coleman says they hope to talk to BC Hockey in the next few days about possibly hosting next year’s event.
He says they will work on how they plan to get people their money back who purchased tickets for this year’s Coy Cup in the next few days.
People can check their website and Facebook page for information.
As far as losing money, Coleman says it is a bit of a financial blow but they haven’t had to pay out the big money to host which is paying for the teams to come in.
He says the biggest loss is all of the time that they spent preparing for it.
Coleman adds the players are obviously disappointed as well…
“We have a pretty active group chat on messenger for our team, and it’s definitely disheartening, most of the guys were pumped and prepped for this. We had kind of a rough go at the beginning of the season and about the second half we really started taking off. We worked so hard to really get ourselves into position to compete well, and we just won our league championship for the second year in a row and that was such a highlight for us, such a big accomplishment. The guys were really pumped to carry that momentum into Coy.”
Coleman says, while he could see the decision coming today, two or three days ago he would have never thought the tournament would have been cancelled.