It’s the second weekend in March and a team of young hockey players is going through drills at the Gordon Beard Arena in Thompson.
Unlike a lot of teams at this time of year, however, these players aren’t getting ready for their final tournament of the season after several others over the preceding three or four months.
This team is the Thompson Little Chiefs and their upcoming tournament – the Western Aboriginal Minor Hockey Championships in Saskatoon – will be their first major tournament of the year, though they’ve been practising since September and have played several games against teams from Wabowden and Nelson House.
Started in the 2011-12 season as a pre-novice squad by Tony and Carlee Monias, the Little Chiefs are now an atom team and most of the players have been members for all of that time. Some play for multiple teams, including the Thompson King Miners, while others don’t play on any other teams at all. And because it’s an independent team, not affiliated with a minor hockey association, it’s a little bit different.
“The parents are more involved with it,” says head coach Tyrone Sass. “We all work together as one. We’ve got to do it all ourselves.”
Sass has coached Thompson Minor Hockey Association teams before, but the Little Chiefs are different. The team is made up mostly of aboriginal players from Nelson House and Cross Lake, some of whom didn’t play hockey before the team was established. And working with the same players year after year gives him an opportunity to witness their growth.
“For me it’s to have fun with them but to see them develop, too,” says Sass. “Ninety-nine per cent of them I’ve had since pre-novice and the could barely skate and they’ve come this far. We’ve got second in Winnipeg last year [at the Manitoba aboriginal minor hockey championships] and third the year before playing in a league above us because we had one kid in that league so we had to go up a division. It’s fun watching them excel at what they’re doing.”
The team is different for players, too, because it’s run like a democracy in which everyone has a say in things like the team name and colours, as well as responsibility for helping out with fundraising and the finances, a role in which parent Carla M’Lot, who was instrumental in helping the team get off the ground, excels.
For eight-year-old Daylin Monias, who’s also played for the atom AA Thompson King Miners and Manitoba Team Extreme in Winnipeg, the Little Chiefs has a unique feel.
“We don’t really get yelled at,” he says. “Other team’s coaches, they yell, ‘Skate harder, skate harder!’ but our team they just say, ‘Skate harder, OK you guys?’”
Having the same teammates year after year also has some advantages.
“You know their voices when they’re calling for the puck and stuff,” says Monias.
March 12-13 was a special weekend for the Little Chiefs – their first hockey camp led by Matt Jones of Winnipeg-based Winn-Pro Hockey, who made his first-ever trip to Thompson to help the Little Chiefs to improve their skating.
“If you can’t skate you can’t play the game at higher levels and that’s basically what we’re seeing with the way the game is now,” says Jones. “At all levels you need to continue to develop and refine your skating so that you are more powerful and efficient so that you have lots of energy and are able to perform at high levels.”
Jones was impressed with the attitude and energy of the Little Chiefs when they were halfway through their second consecutive day of four hours on the ice.
“It’s a lot of volume for these guys,” he said. “Four hours in a day is a lot. I typically wouldn’t see that back home in Winnipeg. It’d be an hour and then we’d switch and I’d see another group for an hour so they definitely worked hard here.”
It’s also a little different to be working with a team that’s been practising all season. Often, Jones works with a lot of players just getting back into the swing of hockey at summer camps in Winnipeg, with this year’s sessions scheduled to run in the last two weeks of August.
“It would help to see them before they start the season and then it’s great after just to continue to work on the skills as they continue to play into the spring and into the summer months because really hockey doesn’t stop any more,” Jones says. “It just keeps going all year round. Back when I was a kid it would end after the winter season but that’s all changed now.”
One person who’s glad the season doesn’t stop is Kurtia Yetman of Nelson House.
“I just like communicating with everybody and they’re a good group,” says the nine-year-old defender, who picked up her position from her father. “My dad actually told me to play defence so I just started liking it.”
Yetman is looking forward to playing in Saskatoon.
“I think we’ll have a chance of playing for the championship,” she says.
Daylin Monias, who has played in Saskatoon several times, says how the Little Chiefs will do depends on what the other teams participating are like, but he remains confident.
“I think we’re going to play pretty good,” he says. “It’s a really good team.”
The camp was put on with the help of a grant from the Manitoba Aboriginal Sports and Recreation Council that Carlee Monias helped the Little Chiefs get. And besides the parents and players, there are other supporters as well, including Nelson House recreation and Doctor Electric, a Nelson House-based business. Sponsors in Thompson include ET Blades and United Steelworkers Local 6166 as well as Awasis Agency.
