TISDALE — A long season was good for the finances of the Tisdale Trojans.
The Trojans’ total account balance is slightly less than $113,000, an increase of a few thousand for the team. Pat Bladen, treasurer for the Trojans, called the financial state “better than average”.
“I wouldn’t say we’re excellent, because you never know what costs come out of the woodwork, but right now we’re definitely sustainable,” Bladen said.
This was discussed at the Trojans annual general meeting on May 23.
“We’ve had many years where we’ve been in the red, so our goal is always to at least maintain our financial record or increase our revenue. If we can do that, we do that.”
This past year the team cancelled their major fundraiser for the year, their Christmas gala, causing a loss of $3,750 on entertainment deposits. This was half of the cost for the entertainment.
The team decided to cancel because of the difficulty of hosting of the event at the same time as getting ready for the Telus Cup Western Regionals. As well, ticket sales were lower than expected.
“We couldn’t drain our executive emotionally and physically to do both – they’re both huge projects so we decided to cut our losses,” Bladen said.
The team has not made a decision if they will continue this fundraiser in the 2019-20 season but are evaluating their options.
“We have to decide if we’re going to do our major fundraiser, which is our gala. It’s a lot of work but it generates some revenue. If we’re not going to do that than we have to find some other ways.”
Greg McShannock, president of the team, said the executive will be looking at their game programs during their next meeting after concerns were raised during the AGM at how they were distributed.
The budgeted income from the sale of programs was $1,500, while only about half the programs were sold at $810.
The concern was raised that although the team was making money off of the sale of programs through sponsorship, that the sponsors themselves may feel the lower number of programs sold may affect future sponsorships.
“Our game programs we’ll look at in our next meeting and decide whether we will turn that into something that’s free and offer it free for the crowd and get a little more coverage for our sponsors,” McShannock said. “I think probably just prior to next year we’ll decide so we will have to make our decision by August.”
The team earns about $10,000 in advertising through the program.
The coming season will be the first one with Dennis Kubat as the coach. Kubat is a full-time teacher in Tisdale as well as last season’s assistant coach with the team.
“It’s an awesome honour to take over a program that has been so successful the last few years and I’m looking forward to getting my stamp on the program and looking forward to the year starting,” Kubat said.
He feels that the program before has been “very successful”.
“Obviously I’m going to make some tweaks... Maybe some things like more technology into the program, being a younger more techy guy that way,” Kubat said. “Just like concentrating more on maybe some analytics and just video before and after games, things along those lines.”
He said he also wants to reinforce that the players are accountable in school as well as educators.
“I just think our program has a great opportunity for our Trojans to be huge role models for younger kids in our community. Being an educator at the elementary school for a few years – they just love the Trojans, and we have the chance to represent our community well. I hope that the hockey players we bring in will not just be great hockey players, but also great people in the community.
Kubat plans to change up the practice schedule to a mixture of afternoons and mornings, rather than just afternoons.
