Just a couple of weeks into Arnprior’s inaugural sledge hockey program, the brand new league is already over capability.

This winter, the city acquired a grant of practically $18,000 to launch this system, making it the one sledge hockey program within the Ottawa Valley.

“[The grant] covered the entire cost of purchasing the sleds, the player equipment, the jerseys, and helped us get some of the staff and training costs in to have this program go,” mentioned Lucas Power, this system and occasions coordinator with the city of Arnprior.

“So we provided all the equipment, similar to that of playing hockey, but it was all provided by the grant.”

Four weeks into this system, gamers had claimed all 16 sleds the city had bought, and a seventeenth participant introduced their very own sled.

One of these gamers who had been looking for accessible sporting alternatives was 12-year-old Leland Brubacher.

“I like sledge hockey because you don’t need to skate,” he mentioned. “All you have to do is use your arms, and I can’t really skate.”

Brubacher was recognized with osteofibrous dysplasia. He has weakened leg bones, wears braces, and has had rods inserted into his legs, in keeping with his mom, Cindy Brubacher.

“That is the only sport really that he is able to excel in,” Brubacher says of her son whereas watching him fly across the rink at Arnprior’s Nick Smith Centre.

“So this is something he’s going to be able to do into adulthood. So it’s got unlimited opportunity for him.”

Previously, a sledge hockey league was working in Barry’s Bay earlier than the pandemic shut it down. Since leisure sport has picked again up, the one possibility obtainable to sledge hockey gamers was in Ottawa.

“We saw a need for it out here in Arnprior, people were making quite the hike to go play,” mentioned Ryan Harris, who has two sons in this system and is among the coaches.

“Obviously, trying to teach a group of people how to do a sport when you’re not down there doing it with them can be tough,” he provides, being able-bodied, “but it’s a lot of fun.”

Assisting with the teaching duties is Rebecca Sharp, who has huge expertise after enjoying on the Canadian ladies’s sledge hockey group.

“I think it’s really cool to see in a small community everyone gathering together to make a sport like this happen, and make it happen for kids in the area that really need it,” Sharp tells CTV News.

“I think a lot more cities and local rinks need it in their areas. I know when I started the sport it wasn’t readily available.”

Arnprior’s sledge hockey program solely runs as soon as per week, however the on-ice attendance at every follow is proving that accessible sport is required in each nook of Canada.

“We knew for sure that this was a program that would fly in our town,” mentioned Power. “There is really limited accessible recreation and we’re really working to improve that.”

In the Arnprior sledge hockey program, able-bodied contributors are allowed to register and play with impaired or disabled gamers.

At the elite degree of the game such because the Paralympics, Hockey Canada says on their web site, “athletes must have an impairment of permanent nature in the lower part of the body of such a degree that it is obvious and easily recognizable and makes ordinary skating – and consequently playing stand-up hockey – impossible.”