Welcome to another season of Ringette in Tillsonburg.  We are looking forward to a great year!

This will be Tillsonburg’s 26^th year playing with the Ontario Ringette Association.  For most of our 18 member Executive, however, it is our first year of being on the Executive.  We are learning as we go and appreciate your patience.  I would like to thank the Executive members who have given up their time to attend meetings and get things up and running for this season.  A special thank you to our committee chairs for their extra efforts – Kelly Cole (Registration), Heather Brazier (Recruitment), Sheila Mann ( Fundraising), Cathy Flindall (Tournaments), Ann Van Hove (Website) and Brian Dejaegher (Coaching Liaison).  Also, a big thanks to everyone who has volunteered to help out our teams through their roles as Coach, Bench Staff or Manager… we couldn’t do it without you!

We will ‘Ice’ teams in every division this year and in some divisions we will have more than one team.  We have also merged with St. Thomas Ringette Association to provide a Provincial level of play at the Junior and Belle divisions.  These teams will share their ice times between Tillsonburg and St. Thomas.

We are also implementing a few new programs that we hope will continue for years to come. First, our Recruitment Committee has hosted 3 very successful “Try Ringette/Bring a Friend” skates to encourage new players to try the sport.  Secondly, we have been running a “Power Skating” program for the month of September and finally, we will be running a “Learn to Skate” program for our Bunnies, new players or anyone who thinks it would help them in developing their skating skills.  This will be every Wednesday from 4:45 to 5:35 p.m. until Christmas.  Thank-you to Becky Turrill who will be running the “Learn to Skate” program and also for her role in the “Try Ringette/Bring a Friend” skates.

We hope everyone will have an enjoyable season.  Please let us know if you have any concerns or questions and we will do our best to address them.

See you at the rink,

Paul Martin

President

COACH’S CORNER………………

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you all to the 2008-2009 Ringette season. For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Becky Turrill and I am the coach of the Tillsonburg Twisters Tween team.  I have been involved with Ringette in Tillsonburg since my daughter started playing in 2000.  I have coached her and the gang for the past 4 years.  Over the past 9 years, I (and my family) have made many new friends and watched many little girls learn how to skate, pass and shoot.  My most rewarding part of being a coach is watching them achieve their goals together as a team.  I would like to share with you a game that my girls still love to play (on the ice only).  It’s clean your room!  Give each player on your team a ring and then divide them in half.  Each team gets half the ice as their “room”.  The object of the game is to get all the rings out of your “room” into the other teams “room”.  Coaches you must play too!

Have a great season!