Shawville Arena gets new boards

September 29, 2020

Caleb Nickerson

caleb@theequity.ca

CALEB NICKERSON

SHAWVILLE Sept. 30, 2020

Though the nature of this year’s hockey season is up in the air, volunteers and staff have been hard at work replacing the boards in the Shawville Arena.

Arena Manager Wes Tubman said that he was unsure of the exact cost of the project, but said that it exceeded $25,000. Over the course of about eight weeks, he and his son Bryan worked on the project during the day, while . . .

crews of volunteers turned out two nights a week to help out.

The funds for the project were generated by the Flying Elbows tournament, as well as several other community partners.

Flying Elbows tournament organizer Will Armitage said that they had been raising money for the new boards for the past three years.

“It wasn’t just us, there was a lot of community help,” he said. “A couple of the other tournaments helped out … a lot of the local businesses helped us get where we needed to be with their support. If we didn’t have that, there wouldn’t be anything. That’s what our tournament’s for, to try and raise a bunch more money and put it back towards the community.”

Tubman said that in addition to looking spiffy and making the arena appear brighter, the renovations allowed them to repair roughly three quarters of the backing behind the boards as well.

“We’ve fixed some soft spots, there’s been a lot of boards that were broken in behind,” he explained. “They call it a dead spot; the puck would hit it and just drop. So we fixed all kinds of that, there were lots of those in behind the nets.”

Both Tubman and Armitage said that there would be discussions in the future to decide what upgrades would be next for the facility.

Tubman emphasized that the work was possible thanks to a large group of volunteers who helped out in the evenings: Taytum Thompson, Tim Thompson, Gavin Rusenstrom, Mike Rusenstrom, Andrew Lang, Gibbson Lang, Kayla McCann, Kyle Vereyken, Felix Vereyken, Collin Hines, Travis Hines, Noah Hines, Dalton Egan, Chris Chabot, Charlie Richardson, Ben Richardson, Nate Richardson, Raymond Barre, Lucas Barre, Craig McCormick, Brayden McCormick, Connor McCormick, Brycen Ireland, Steve Rusenstrom, Garrett Rusenstrom, Greg Hayes, Paul Emmerson, Todd Hearty, Keith Kirkham (for use of a tractor) and Danny Lalonde (for towing tractor).

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