Mayor Don McCormick shared at Council this past Monday evening that Kimberley was in the process of trying to secure a Women’s Hockey Academy’s relocation to the City.
The Academy is currently located in Warner, Alberta, and its coach and director of hockey operations is former NHLer Mikko Makela.
“They are looking to move it here,” McCormick said. “He was here touring facilities.”
The school has about 25 students, all young women aged 14 to 18. They would use Kimberley as a base for training and take part in a Canada/US league.
However, McCormick says that the process of securing the school for Kimberley has run into a few snags.
One of the issues is accommodation.
The school would prefer a dormitory style set up, and McCormick said that Kimberley didn’t really have that sort of thing to offer, although he thought that working with local accommodators, something could be worked out.
However, the other snag is education costs for out-of-province students.
“Most of the girls are from Alberta and would have to pay extra fees to SD6,” McCormick. Those fees are no small change — being approximately $7,000 per student on top of the tuition for the school.
“The bottom line is we’ve run out of time for this year,” he said. “So the effort is to focus on next year, or if they decide to go somewhere else, we will look for something similar.
“It’s a great idea. It gets our facilities used and takes advantage of Kimberley’s hockey heritage. The goal of academies like these is scholarships. That’s why the education piece is so important.”
