Levi Jessiman of Cochrane is in his fifth year of organizing the Holiday Hockey Charity Fundraiser that goes every year on Dec. 23 at the Cochrane Arena.
The charity hockey game is used to for people in the community to come out and play a sport they love, while also raising money in order for Jessiman to take the money they earned in order to buy toys for children at the Alberta Children’s Hospital.
The game originally started after Jessiman and a few of his friends got together to play a game of shinny.
“Originally, we just got some guys together to play a pick up game, and we had a lot of fun doing so. We wanted to book another ice time the following year and decided on Christmas. When we did it, we realized we’d have a fair amount of people around, so we might as well see if we could raise some money,” Jessiman said.
“I picked the (Alberta) Children’s Hospital, and took the money that we made and put it towards buying toys for the kids there. To be honest, I don’t really know how it came to fruition … we started it five years ago and got some friends that have all played money hockey together, went to the arena, put the pads on and skated around for a few hours. We ended up with a couple thousand dollars that we went and bought toys with for the hospital.”
“We’ve just kind of grown it from there. I think the first year we had 20 skaters and have grown ever since. We had over 100 people there last night from people who play junior and collegiate hockey to those who strap on the skates once a year … it’s a really good time, everyone gets a chance to play and everybody has a lot of fun.”
Jessiman said this year’s game brought in more than $2,600, which has brought the grand total up to more than $12,000 over the five-year history of the event.
“We have a really great buy-in from our community here and everybody has crossed paths before, whether it’s playing minor hockey or junior together, so everyone is familiar with one another,” Jessiman said.
“It just really shows how strong our community is to want to come together and do something for a good cause. Last night, we broke our record for how much money we raised ($2,600) and that brings our total to $12,000 since we first started. All that money has gone to buying toys and donating them to the Children’s Hospital. It was a pretty cool moment to eclipse the $10,000 mark and to break our single-year record was pretty awesome as well.”
