Several interesting things have happened with the Ghostriders hockey team since the end of the season and in the next couple of weeks we’ll get you up to speed on all the changes. The most important off season news story came from the Ghostriders Annual General Meeting where President Phil Iddon accepted his nomination for yet another one year term as team President. This is the most time consuming and stressful volunteer position there is in the organization. It takes a unique organized person to run the team and that person also has to have the charisma be able to attract a host of volunteers to help out with the literally dozens of game day etc. jobs.
Phil has all those qualifications and will now enter his eleventh year in a row as President. Rider fans should thank Phil for getting on board again this year.
Next on the agenda was signing a Head Coach for the team. For the last four years with Coach Will Verner at the helm the Ghostriders have won their division four times, have always been at or near the top of the league in the standings and have a KIJHL Championship along with both Bronze and Silver Medals at the Cyclone Taylor Cup.
The team has had a pretty good run under Verner so it was an easy decision to sign him for two more years.
With the signing Verner will start his fifth season with the Riders this fall. As part of his new deal Verner now has the funds to hire a full time assistant coach for the 2011/12 season. It will actually be a pretty good chance for someone to get their foot in the coaching door so to speak as the Ghostriders operate like a Jr “A” team and the candidate will be mentored by an experienced Coach/ GM who has worked his way up through minor hockey and up to the BCHL as well as with both Fernie and Castlegar in the KIJHL.
And finally, Coach Verner has had to make several trades to cut down his bumper crop of 11 20-year-old players. He can only keep four so we’ll talk about that next week. We hope you’ll like the new “Off the Glass” column this season, here you’ll find all the Rider news stories and the more interesting league stories, plus some KIJHL gossip as well.