The KIJHL has set a tentative start date for the 2020-2021 season.
Chair Person Tom Bachynski said at the last league Annual General Meeting that was held earlier this month, all 20 teams agreed on a planned date of October 2nd.
“We are taking cues from other leagues and health authorities to navigate through what to do, how to be ready for the upcoming season, BC Hockey who has had a tremendous amount of liaison with the Provincial Government announced that they were going to move their start date to October 2nd to give enough time for arenas to open, and training camps, and that sort of thing, and so it was agreed that we should probably set the same date because obviously we share the same pool of teenage players so it made sense to put a date of October 2nd “.
Because October 2nd is a tentative start date, Bachynski said the KIJHL has come up with several other options.
“We’ve created I think six start dates so we’ve gone right up to almost the first of December so that we can build one schedule, if we’re delayed and delayed and delayed and then it’s a go at least we will have a schedule predetermined for that date”.
Bachynski added that the League has already determined that teams won’t be playing cross-conference and at best right now they’re planning for a 42-game season depending on how late the league gets started.
“We’ve already determined that we won’t be going cross-conference so we won’t be going to the East or West Kootenays this year and they did agree unanimously that we would play the majority of our games in our division and we would just do one cross-over to the other division in our conference so we would play one home and one away game with the Okanagan division teams”.
Bachynski says they still have to abide by the Provincial Government Health Guidelines and that they are watching to see what direction they go in as they head into Phase 3.
All 20 KIJHL teams are moving forward to have a season and hoping that it starts October 2nd.