Mike Sinclair, who has been President of the Paris Minor Hockey Association since 2020, will be heading the merged association between Paris, Burford, and St. George for the 2024-25 season.
Sinclair explains how the merger between the three associations happened.
“There’s always been talk around Paris minor hockey about a possible merger somewhere in the county [which] never really came to fruition. It wasn’t prevalent and strong around here at the time. Then around a year ago, I got an email from the president of Ayr Minor Hockey who [wanted to] see if we’d be interested in [a] possible merger between [our two associations.] At that time, we had been working closely with Burford Minor Hockey and St. George Minor Hockey …helping each other out with players and teams,” Sinclair continued. “A few of us traveled to Ayr and talked about their thoughts about moving forward. From there, we involved Burford in the talks and then St. George. We worked pretty hard from January [2023] till we had a membership vote in November [2023].”
Despite Ayr being an initial proponent of a merger, they would eventually decide not to go forward. The new association will be called the Brant County Minor Hockey Association (BCMHA), which has been registered as a non-profit and will play under the Brant Battalion moniker.
Sinclair, who has been involved with Paris minor hockey for the majority of his life as a player as a coach, and eventually as an executive, noted the key to this merger was about the children.
“The current board of the BCMHA is made up of four members from all three associations on the current executives…so we’ve got equal representation [and] everybody’s getting an equal say,” explained Sinclair. “We have all worked closely before; so, we’re all comfortable with each other [and] everybody’s in it for the right reasons…we are all doing this for the kids.”
Sinclair then further explained some key benefits of the merger for the members.
“The opportunity is for all of our members to play a higher level of hockey…that’s probably the biggest benefit for all of these kids. [We wanted to create] a level playing field by making an ‘A’. The other benefit is more development. [We were] grouping kids, playing at the same skill level in basically a single age cohort…now we are grouping kids based on age, and age only. They won’t be playing against kids who are a year older, bigger, stronger, [and] a year ahead of developments. [That is] probably the biggest positive from this merger,” said Sinclair.
Along with the diligent work between the three minor hockey associations, Sinclair noted the support of the County of Brant despite some adjustments that have to be made to accommodate the BCMHA.
“The challenge is the logistics of putting this whole thing together [and] trying to figure out a schedule [while] dealing with the county and making sure we can get enough ice time for these kids. [And] to put them on the ice for the appropriate amount of time that they need [to] develop and to compete at this level,” concluded Sinclair.
