The Whitehorse Minor Hockey Association (WMHA) was forced to shut down some games due to COVID-19 recently.

WMHA President Jeff Frizzell explained what happened.

“A couple of weeks ago, before our U9 players were going to head out onto the ice, we got notified that there were some positive cases in the schools that would affect some of our players. So we shut down – we got notified on a Saturday that one of our players in the schools tested positive so we shut down the U9’s games and practices for that weekend. That was the first case that came up that we had been notified for, so we wanted to be in touch with the CDC (Yukon Communicable Disease Control) and get some direction on how to proceed,” Frizzell related.

“And then the following week, while the U9 was shut down, we had a case again in the schools ... in our U7 division, so we shut down U7 for a week and we spoke to the CDC and got direction on how to proceed from them. So they do all the contact tracing and let us know who needs to isolate, which teams need to isolate, which teams just need to self-monitor,” added Frizzell.

The WMHA shut down the U9 games on Saturday Oct.23.

“The one student who had tested positive let us know right away and we got notified right away about 1 o’clock on a Saturday and then – they were supposed to go out on the ice at 3:30 so we just sent an email to everyone that it affected and updated our Facebook page and all the information got out really quick and no one actually showed up for the ice time. It seemed to work out pretty well. It was unfortunate. We didn’t want to shut ... the whole division down, but that being our first case with it, and our first time dealing with it, we wanted to be safe rather than sorry,” recalled Frizzell.

Three U9 ice times on Saturday Oct 23 and two U9 ice times on Sunday Oct. 24 were canceled, as well as skill sessions on Monday.

The U9 division started up again the following weekend.

“We didn’t play any games, just to be sure. We just kept everybody with their own teams. We didn’t want the players intermingling just because the 14 days hadn’t been up. So the kids that were affected stayed away from the rink and we just kept everyone else in their teams,” explained Frizzell.