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Various options available for hockey-minded families

Kids hockey skates: $129 on sale. Regularly $149 and up. Hockey stick on clearance: $80 each. Regularly $119 and up. Helmet with cage: Starting at $50.
If you don’t have hockey equipment, Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre has racks of skates, helmets and even some sticks on loan for daily pickup hockey sessions.
If you don’t have hockey equipment, Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre has racks of skates, helmets and even some sticks on loan for daily pickup hockey sessions.

Kids hockey skates: $129 on sale. Regularly $149 and up.

Hockey stick on clearance: $80 each. Regularly $119 and up.

Helmet with cage: Starting at $50.

Before you’ve gone as far as gloves, pants and all the other protective gear your 10-year-old needs to play organized ice hockey, you’ve already dropped $250 - on clearance sale at a major sports retailer.

The cost of competitive hockey can be prohibitive for some, particularly those on a tight budget.

Thankfully, in Cochrane, you can still get game without emptying your wallet.

An informal Feb. 4 conversation with Cochrane Minor Hockey Association’s Shelly Javorski at Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre reveals numerous options for budget-challenged hockey parents. Not the least of which is the CMHA’s annual preseason hockey-gear swap meet at the SLSFSC. Every year, usually in September, gear used one season before being out-grown fills tables at the SLSFSC for just pennies on the dollar.

But once you’ve sourced equipment at an affordable price, you then have to find a program you can get your young player into. According to the CMHA fee schedule on their website, House league fees in the Initiation program (4/5-year-olds) start at $550 for early registration before a refundable $100 sweater deposit. The little spuds in the Timbits sweaters have been on SLSFSC ice every Monday since October, learning the basics of the game. Being in highly-organized and competitive Rep league can get as high as $1,150 for early registrants and doesn’t include equipment, extra tournament or travel fees.

Recreational league checks in at $300 per player per season before fundraising and sweater deposits.

But if you feel you just aren’t prepared to commit your youngster, and your wallet, to organized hockey in Cochrane, there’s always the casual pickup-game option. If you have a stick and gloves (can be had for as little as $25), you can just head down to the SLSFSC for a daily open session of “sticks and pucks.” There are racks of loaner helmets and skates in the centre’s Totem 1 rink you can use. You may even find a loaner stick as well.

Or you can just grab your friends and family and go shoot some pucks at an outdoor rink or on any frozen pond in town for the cost of air — just supply your own skates, stick, helmet and puck.

That’s the beauty of hockey in Cochrane. There’s a game for every budget.

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