KIBIHT: R.I.P.

By TRACY WATSON
Daily News Sports Reporter
For months now, Fred Cavanagh has left the door open, perhaps just a crack, to the possibility there still may be a way to save the Kamloops International Bantam Ice Hockey Tournament.
Well, that door now has closed — slammed shut by members of the KIBIHT society who voted unanimously Wednesday night to end the city’s longest tournament after 40 years.
The end of the tournament is a “done deal,” said KIBIHT president Fred Cavanagh.
“The members decided that this has been drug out long enough,” he said Thursday. “Anybody that’s going to run it, whether it be us or somebody else, is going to have to have time to put this together. And right now, you’re running out of time. So the motion was made to squash it, and that’s it.”
Cavanagh said he kept hoping that suitable ice time could be found to hold the event for a 41st time in 2009. However, even if the City of Kamloops comes up with a miracle, he said it’s too late to reconsider the society’s decision.
“Quite frankly, it’s probably already past (the point of no return),” Cavanagh said. “I have to now get hold of these two organizations (Langley and Victoria) that expressed interest in taking it there and see if they’re still interested. Because the timeframe for them is probably gone by now as well. And if it doesn’t happen there, we’ll just shut it down period.”
Because KIBIHT is a non-profit society, members now are able to vote on whether to sell their assets. Cavanagh has said in the past that groups in Langley and Victoria had been interested in perhaps purchasing them.
KIBIHT has had trouble in recent years attracting enough quality club teams to ensure the tournament is a high-calibre draw. With the growing propensity toward all-star teams, and with the conflicts that have arisen with bantam playoffs and all-star selection camps, that task just keeps getting tougher.
So KIBIHT organizers decided after the 40th edition, which ran April 8-13, that they would reformat the event into a spring, or all-star, tournament. The only problem was that it would have to be pushed back in 2009, ideally from April 28 to May 2.
Those dates, however, didn’t work for the City of Kamloops — the ice already will have been pulled out of the McArthur Island Sports and Events Centre, the most desired arena for the tournament, because of other user groups, such as lacrosse and trade shows. And, ideally, four ice surfaces are required to hold a tournament of KIBIHT’s magnitude.
There were discussions between KIBIHT and the City to find a compromise, but Cavanagh said months lapsed between the initial talks and the most recent meetings. He said talks ranged from using the Sports Centre after all, to using Memorial Arena, Valleyview and ISC, to the City’s final proposal.
On Aug. 12, City administrator Randy Diehl told Council that a viable alternative was to use two city arenas, Interior Savings Centre and Valleyview Arena, as well as the privately owned Ice Box Arena.
That’s why it was so surprising to Diehl on Thursday that the KIBIHT society had called off the tourney altogether.
“It’s disappointing, because KIBIHT is an important tournament,” Diehl said. “It’s a valuable tournament to the City.”
Now that the society has voted to end it, will the City go back to the drawing board in a last-ditch effort to save it?
“I think we’ve provided them with a solution,” Diehl said. “Basically we’ve got two (City) rinks. That’s it. There are other users using the (other) rinks. There are conflicts all over the place. We can move some times around and we can move a couple of rinks around within reason, but we can’t give them four and we can’t give them three City rinks.
“They were very clear: ‘We’d be happy if we got three.’ So we went back to them with those three, knowing full well that it wasn’t ideal, and knowing full well they had used the Ice Box two years before,” Diehl said. “We thought, OK, maybe this will work and let’s try to get a meeting together. Since Aug. 12 we’ve called him and said, 'We’d like to meet with you to discuss this,’ and the response back was, ‘We don’t think that’s necessary.’
“We didn’t hear back until we’ve heard through the media that they have decided for whatever reason to cancel the program.”
Cavanagh tells a different story.
“The only time I ever agreed to work it with three arenas would have been with McArthur Island and ISC — that was the original proposal,” he said. “And it got changed twice after that.”
Cavanagh said one of his concerns with the three-rink scenario was the WHL playoffs — what happens if the Kamloops Blazers require the ISC during the tourney dates? With only three ice surfaces, there isn’t any wiggle room for schedule alterations.
“There’s no more ice in town, so it would not work. You can’t run a tournament of this size on ifs and maybes. If it happens — and it has happened before — every time the Blazers have one playoff game we have to reschedule three of ours. I said, ‘What would I do with these teams? Ask them to stay another day over in a hotel?’ You can’t do that. So that’s where it ended.”
Even if a better solution still could be found, Cavanagh said he wouldn’t entertain it.
“At some point in time the frustration sets in and enough is enough,” he said. “Let’s get on with it. That’s where we’re at now.”
twatson@kamloopsnews.ca