A thank you to the City of Sparwood, the FGR Executive, and the Players & Coaches

The Ghostriders lost 2-1 in overtime in Kimberley Wednesday night and their season is over.

Team President Barb Anderson 
"The Ghostriders would like to thank the City of Sparwood and especially Community Services Assistant Sheri Taylor, she was instrumental in helping the Rider Executive and Players get set up in Sparwood and ensured that our team was looked after and welcomed.”


Photo-Captain Mitch Titus, and assistant Captains Kevin Pierce, Grayson Neufeld and Brendan Nemes with Sheri Taylor and Barb Anderson.

My thoughts...

This was a very trying year for the organization, the players and the Cities of both Fernie and Sparwood.

After the Fernie arena disaster and subsequent closing of the Fernie arena the Rider volunteers worked tirelessly to keep the team running. They traveled over the constantly dangerous snow covered  roads to Sparwood early and stayed late for all the games so they could setup and take down their tables in the lobby. It was and still is a thankless job, but here we will thank them... they could have voted to shut the team down for the season, but didn’t.

The players and coaches also sacrificed, a lot, they traveled over the same snow covered roads, only they did it every day for practice and games. 

They also had all their equipment stored in a heated sea can outside the arena. The sea can did it’s job but not having their own “Room” in Fernie where they could hang around watch TV and bond etc took it’s toll. 

You may think that not having a “room” isn’t a big deal, but ask any head coach, they will tell you that in the world of team building, this was a big deal.

 I also thank the players, and coaches for staying with the team and all the newer guys for even coming into this very trying situation. And thank Sparwood Minor Hockey and Figure skating for sacrificing their valuable ice time to help out the Riders, Fernie Minor Hockey and Fernie Figure Skating. All three would have  shut down without your help.

I’m told the Fernie rink will be open next season, if not I don’t think you can ask all the people we just talked about to do this again.

Congrat’s to the Nitro’s for getting to the second round.