Skip to content

Scramble on to find dressing rooms for refs at new Port Coquitlam community centre

Port Coquitlam’s mayor says no hockey games will be lost as the city scrambles to provide dressing room space for referees at the city’s new $132-million recreation complex.
PoCo hockey game
An exhibition game between a team from Coquitlam RCMP and Port Coquitlam firefighters at last Tuesday's official opening of the Port Coquitlam Community Centre may be the only hockey played there for a while as the city scrambles to find separate dressing rooms space for referees to comply with a Hockey Canada rule.

Port Coquitlam’s mayor says no hockey games will be lost as the city scrambles to provide dressing room space for referees at the city’s new $132-million recreation complex.

Brad West said the city is waiting to hear if a mobile dressing room in a trailer parked outside the Port Coquitlam community centre will conform to a Hockey Canada rule that requires officials be provided a separate dressing room equipped with a toilet and shower. He said a special meeting of council will be held Wednesday to consider the plan, which is expected to cost about $17,000 and be in place for two years while referee facilities are built as part of the community centre project’s second phase.

West said the oversight came to light just days after the project’s first phase — which includes two new ice rinks, a new Terry Fox Library and Wilson Centre for seniors — was officially opened Aug. 27. He said he received an email from the president of the Port Coquitlam Minor Hockey Association, Kim Egli, that informed him the city’s plan to accommodate referees in a spare team dressing room, or cubicles in the facility’s main changing room if they were all occupied, doesn’t conform to Hockey Canada’s rule.

Egli told The Tri-City News the first she heard of the problem was in a phone call last Wednesday from an official with Pacific Coast Amateur Hockey Association who informed her of the Hockey Canada rule and the new community centre’s non-compliance.

“I was shocked,” she said. “Two rinks with no referee dressing rooms just seems weird.”

Egli said she has already heard some officials, who travel from as far away as Mission, won’t work games at the new facility — and that could jeopardize minor hockey games that begin as soon as this weekend.

“At this point, I sent out messages to parents that we can’t have any home games until this is rectified,” Egli said, adding while that could affect just a handful of exhibition games early in the hockey season, the schedule begins in earnest Sept. 16.

Egli said she doesn’t understand how the oversight could have happened. She said the association’s referee allocator was involved in meetings with city officials during planning for the new facility.

“The issue is what did they do with that information,” she said.

West said he’s puzzled as well and plans to meet with all parties involved in the planning.

“Obviously, there was a miscommunication and a ball got dropped somewhere,” he said. “I don’t want to see things like that happen again.”

West said the hiccup has cast a bit of a pall on the “very positive feelings” created by the unveiling of the massive 205,000-sq. ft. complex, which will eventually include three arenas and a leisure pool.

Egli said with PoCo minor hockey’s season already delayed a week waiting for the community centre to open, the clock is ticking for a solution to be in place.

“I warned parents there could be some hiccups along the way,” she said. “I didn’t think I would run into a situation like this.”