The 24th Leaside Select Hockey Tournament is about to begin Thursday (February 6, 2014) with more than 1,800 players from across the district competing in 12 age groups. The kids, 6 to 18 years old, will be playing on 100 teams and as many as 6,500 family members will attend the games. It is a wonderful triumph of sports, family fun and generous support from public spirited individuals and corporations. Jeff Munn, vice president of select programs at the Leaside Hockey Association recounts the impact of Leaside’s new double pad arena this year. “Last year we could only accommodate 75 teams,” he recalled. Mr. Munn explained that the new arena permitted the expansion of the Leaside teams from 2013’s 16 to 25 for this year. Each Leaside coach was permitted to issue three invitations to make up the 100 team limit. “We get a lot of requests for invitations,” said Mr. Munn. The new arena will permit all the games involving Leaside teams to take place on local ice and overflow games will be accommodated almost entirely at the nearby CanLan Vic Park Arena on Victoria Park Ave. The logistics of looking after this army of young hockey players is greatly helped by sponsors such as Bell, Scotiabank, Pepsi, Longo’s Metro, Starbucks and, in the case of the sandwiches, Andy Elder’s Grilltime meat specialty shop on Laird Drive. People like Shannon Quesnelle and her many parent friends and volunteers, will be on deck throughout the tourney to see to the care and feeding of the kids. The games go pretty much all day long for three and a half days and the public is welcome to pop in to catch some of the action. Schedule so far