When the Special Olympics floor hockey competition gets underway today the athletes will literally be playing with the support of some Paul Kane High School students.
Students from the schools' carpentry academy program spent this past weekend building and assembling the two floor hockey rinks for the Games, which run until Saturday.
The idea to build the rinks came about through a collaboration between floor hockey manager Blaine Fuller and Paul Kane teacher Randy Kozak, said Mike Edwards, manager of the 2012 Special Olympics Canada Winter Games.
The Paul Kane students constructed the two floor hockey rinks over the weekend at Servus Credit Union Place, Edwards said, complete with boards, braces, gates and nets.
"It's a smaller version of the ice rink without the ice," he said.
Randy Kozak, a career and technology studies teacher at Paul Kane, supervised the roughly 50 students in building the two massive rinks, and said when he first offered the school's help he had no idea what he was getting into.
"It just started rolling down the hill and next thing I knew we were building them and setting them up," he said.
Important feature
Having the purpose-built rinks was of huge importance to the Games, Edwards said. Floor hockey uses different rink dimensions than ice hockey, and usually has to be played using lines on gym floors. These rinks will let players bank shots off the boards, letting them play the sport the way it was meant to be played.
The boards are modular, Edwards said, and will be given back to Paul Kane after the Games for teaching purposes.
Edwards gave huge thanks to the students for their efforts. "I know the fans will appreciate it."
Kozak said the work, which was done mostly outside of class time, really began about two weeks ago when the school took delivery of all the supplies to build the project. Students did a lot of the work in the school's shop and then assembled them over the weekend at Servus Place.
He said the students put in a huge effort and he was extremely proud and impressed.
"For the bulk of my crew, I would say they put in pretty close to 40 hours over the course of the weekend," he said. "They weren't really complaining at all about when can we go or anything. It was pretty neat watching the kids putting it all together and for me to see how proud they were."
Kozak said the kids were able to practice important carpentry skills, as well as get some experience co-ordinating all of the details of a large project.
"A lot of it was making sure that the prep work here at the school wouldn't cost us another 10 hours over there," he said.
Since the work was completed he's received accolades about the rinks, but he said it's the students who deserve the credit.
"It is not about me, it is about the kids. They are the ones who are doing all the work and they all showed up," he said. "On Saturday when I had 12 signed up to come, all 12 showed up and if I had only had two I would have been in some trouble."
