Caledon Coyotes hosted Remembrance Day game

November 18, 2021 · 0 Comments

By Robert Belardi

Barry Hawse, head coach of the Caledon Coyotes U18 BB rep team, knows what it means to be a leader in the community.

He shares that philosophy and drive with his girls’ hockey team here in the local community on what it means to have an impact on those around you.

“Part of what our team does is we do a lot of work in the community. It’s part of my program. Once a month we do something as a team. Last month we cleaned up three parks in Caledon,” Hawse said.

“It’s part of the leadership development for these girls. Everything we do is volunteer. We let them see volunteering is good. We’ve done a lot of work with Caledon and community connections.”

A few weekends ago at a Remembrance Day tournament in Grand River, Hawse came across a sponsor that would be willing to design Remembrance Day jerseys. Eagleview Managed Services, an IT service company, was up for the job.

Hawse intended on hosting an exhibition game at Caledon East. In his planning, he called the Central York Panthers U18 BB team and their head coach David Heath, was more than willing to bring his team over.

“I didn’t even hesitate to say yes. I thought it was really important for the girls to experience that,” Heath said.

In front of plenty of parents, another boys’ hockey team that came over from another rink and members of other teams in the league to watch the ceremony, the Coyotes and the Panthers hosted local veterans, members of the police service and fire department come in. Hawse said this was all to say thank you to everyone for their services and sacrifice to protect those around them.

The Coyotes took the exhibition game over the Panthers by a score of 1-0.

Following the game, Hawse spoke to his team and everyone appreciated what they had just been a part of.

“They were very excited and very proud. It’s not often you can think about things you should be thankful for and grateful for. The girls were all very moved by it and they were very happy they had extra people watch their game, of course,” Hawse said.

“They were excited at the start. We had the people we were honouring come on the ice. We had a speech and a poem and someone sing the anthem. It was awesome.”

On the other end, moving forward for Remembrance Day next year, Heath said this is something he will definitely promote moving forward to next year.

“Like I said the minute we got the call, I didn’t even know if we could even have our team go out there. I didn’t know who was available I just said yes. We had our entire team there and nobody missed it. I would highly recommend it for anybody to experience it. We need to do more of that for sure.”