Sports

Richmond Olympic Oval hosts hockey tournament

By Matthew Cheung

Published 12:42 PDT, Mon August 29, 2022

Last Updated: 3:25 PDT, Mon September 26, 2022

The Richmond Olympic Oval will be home to the Beat the Heat hockey tournament this weekend. 

From Sept. 2 to 4, spectators of the tournament can watch any game for free. The tournament, which is hosted by Hockey Community, will feature a total of 12 teams broken up into three divisions playing recreational or competitive hockey.

The tournament celebrates the end of the summer every year and attracts competition from all over the world. 

“People from France, Belgium, Hong Kong, Toronto, Montreal, and the (United States) all come to participate in the tournament,” says Peter Suen, event coordinator at Hockey Community. 

This will be the ninth annual event, and organizers’ goal is to make hockey more accessible for everyone. 

“Over the years, we’ve built a large, close-knit community that celebrates the sport of hockey (ball, ice, and floor ball),” says Suen.

Hockey Community was founded over a decade ago by Alex Toulemonde, who came to Canada to experience and understand the sport that is synonymous with Canadian culture. On his journey to understand the sport, he discovered the frustration of finding opportunities to play hockey. 

Toulemonde and friend Ryan Samson wanted to make hockey happen by using modern technology to connect people. Their application allows people all over the world to find, organize, and play in hockey games, events, and tournaments. 

Through the app, event organizers can access their event details at the touch of a button. Organizers can customize their event to their liking and communicate with participating teams through league-wide or division-specific messaging. 

Participants can search for games and access team statistics, schedules, and standings. Team captains can also search for substitute players to fill in for their team, and keep track of who is available to play each game. 

Today the application has been used to host over 160,000 community events and over 950,000 games for more than 108,000 members in over 40 countries. 

While team members are excited for this years’ event, they are also eagerly looking forward to next year.

“People look forward to playing every year, and we’re happy that we were able to make this happen. Next year, we expect to be able to fully return and feature international content,” says Suen. 

For more information about the tournament, click here.

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