Getting better every day

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This article was published 21/12/2023 (948 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a clean slate in every way for the Maples boys’ hockey program.

The team made its return to the Winnipeg High School Hockey League this season, after the program folded in 2010. Members of the squad are just as inexperienced as the program itself, and the on-ice results have been trying at times.

The club is 0-14 in the Price Division, scoring just 12 goals while surrendering 227. In their final outing before the holiday break, the Louis-Riel Voyageurs skated off with a 21-0 win on Tuesday.

Beyond the scoresheet, however, there’s much to celebrate.

The program has given players such as Sanveer Singh an opportunity to play a game he’s come to love since arriving in the provincial capital.

Singh, 17, emigrated from Dubai to British Columbia with his parents in 2018 then moved to Winnipeg two years later. He had no idea what hockey was before arriving in Canada.

“Nothing,” said Singh, who played badminton and soccer growing up. “I didn’t know that there was a sport related to skating. I thought skating was just figure skating and having fun.”

His friends in B.C. introduced him to watching hockey, but it wasn’t until he reached Winnipeg that his interest grew in playing.

“I thought, ‘This game is fast, they look cool, so how about I try it?’” Singh said. “I thought if I got an opportunity, that I should try my best and maybe think about ice hockey in the future, as well.”

“I thought, ‘This game is fast, they look cool, so how about I try it?’”–Sanveer Singh

Adamant about bringing hockey back to the school, vice-principal Ryan Cook (who coached the previous iteration of the team) tried starting an after-school on-ice program at Maples in 2012 — but that fell flat. In 2019, he welcomed a hockey-focused gym program, an alternative to standard gym class, which took off and proved to increase interest around the school.

The idea of a team gained traction when Maples hosted a student-staff hockey game last December. About 20 students came out for the game and that wasn’t lost on the faculty.

“It was actually our admin team that said, ‘There’s enough players out here that we could put a team together, so if we have interest and we have buy-in from the students who want to do it, let’s do it,’” said Ryan Poirier, head coach at Maples.

About 200 Indigenous students are enrolled at Maples Collegiate and another 1,000 — the majority of the student body — are South-Asian or of South-Asian descent.

The hockey team has many Indigenous players, most from Berens River, a community about four hours north of Winnipeg on the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg. The kids had played hockey recreationally but never on a structured team.

Grade 11 forward Mika Cordell, one of the more experienced players and respected voices in the locker room, was born in Thompson, where he lived for 11 years.

He described his previous hockey experience as “more of a recreational thing,” with one or two practices every week and a tournament in another northern community every weekend.

Participating with the high school squad and getting into a regular routine has been rewarding.

“It feels pretty good to be playing with Maples. Before this, I played with U18 Raiders… we had a lot of players who didn’t really know how to play,” he continued. “It’s kind of the same this year, we have some new players that have only been playing for two or three years. So, we’re learning as a team how to play the game, especially in a contact setting, which they’ve never played before.”

Working with an inexperienced group has been challenging at many points, Poirier said, adding he’s confident with his teaching process.

“Our approach to the group is, you have a group of students who have never played organized hockey before. So, some of the things that other athletes within our city have grown up playing hockey from five or six years old that have just been ingrained in them, these student have never had that,” Poirier said.

“For anybody, winning is important. But we’ve always said from Day 1 that this is a process. It was important for us to bring on some Grade 9s and 10s onto the team this year, with the hopes of having them believe in our process— to say that, ‘We’re not going to get to where we want to this year, but maybe when you’re in Grade 11… you’re seeing some results at the end of the journey.’”

Maintaining positive vibes even in the face of guaranteed defeats hasn’t been a problem for this group.

There’s been no hanging of heads when pucks fill their net. Instead, they race back to the faceoff dot for another chance to make a better play than the time before.

“It’s about development. I remember I was in Grade 10 on the soccer team, we lost every single game, but the next year they were in the top-five. It’s about development, not about winning or losing,” Singh said.

”It’s about development, not about winning or losing.”–Sanveer Singh

Singh is the only South-Asian player on the team. The winger has tallied one goal and an assist.

“That’s why (Singh) is one of my favourite people in the world because of the courage that it takes to play the game that in his community isn’t a very popular sport,” said Cook, the team manager.

“A big part of it is, among the staff and, I believe, among a lot of the students, is an interest to have a hockey team here. There is a long tradition of Maples hockey in the league and I think really (it’s about) trying to target a group of kids who like hockey, want to play hockey, but maybe just don’t have the opportunity,” he continued. “That’s what we have right now.”

Hockey Manitoba and Hockey Canada do not track diversity among players in the province. The sport has reached a more diverse audience in recent years as the country’s immigration numbers continue to climb, however. In 2015, CBC Television debuted an extension of its flagship sports show Hockey Night in Canada with Hockey Night in Canada: Punjabi Edition.

The weekly show, broadcasted in Punjabi, is hosted by Harnarayan Singh, a Sikh man with a turban and a long beard. A 2017 research by Courtney Szto, researcher and author of Changing on the Fly Hockey through the Voices of South Asian Canadians, revealed HNIC: Punjabi Edition averaged 209,000 viewers.

The show has become a staple in many living rooms, especially in Punjabi-speaking households, pointing to the rising interest among the South-Asian community.

Singh hardly knew how to tie a pair of skates four years ago. Since then, he’s been challenged to learn a new sport — one that is extremely physical — and is now playing on a team that has yet to win a game.

Yet, he’s enjoying every second.

“Everyone who’s on the team… They’re always helping me to improve every day. Even today, there were a couple of teammates (at practice) who were teaching me how to do a slapshot.

“The main point is the team — they encouraged me to do something new, they teach me, they help me, they try to improve me every day.”

jfreysam@freepress.mb.ca

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