Supplied: Icebergtournament.ca

By Abby Zieverink

Tickets available now through April 3

Fifth annual Iceberg Tournament going ahead in April

Mar 17, 2022 | 12:50 PM

After two years of cancellations due to the pandemic, the Grande Prairie U15 Knights are gearing up to host the 5th annual Iceberg Tournament.

The 2022 Iceberg Tournament will take place April 1-3 at the Crosslink County Sportsplex and is used to help raise money to support children’s mental health initiatives, specifically ed-psych evaluations for local youth.

Co-chair tournament director Tara Melezko says ed-psych evaluations help diagnose children with anything from ADHD, learning disabilities, picking up on the autism spectrum and can help the child’s mental health significantly in their school years.

“When you have a kid who needs an ed-psych or requires one, it’s daunting, its scary, and a lot of these times when a child is being diagnosed with ADHD or ODD, anxiety or depression,” she explained.

However, ed-psych evaluations can come with a price tag of as high as $2,500 for one evaluation. Lots of the time, patients are also faced with long waitlists.

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“My three youngest kids were all on a waitlist and it took a while, so it’s hard for a parent to know where to even go. And then you’re slapped with ‘it’s a $1,200 test’ well, that’s really out of reach for quite a few people and they (ed psych evaluations) are even more expensive now,” Melezko said.

“We are just trying to get kids off those waitlists and open up the doors for support and understanding for that child and helping them have a better and happier school career because that’s really important for kids, that’s where they spend so much time.”

To date, the tournament has raised over $29,000.

Proceeds from the purchase of raffle tickets, donations for programs and 50/50 draws as well as supporting tournament vendors and direct donations are donated to the school district foundation.

Melezko says this year they partnered with WestJet to provide the “Gift of Flight.”

She says they are raffling 2 tickets anywhere WestJet flies and a progressive 50/50 add-on.

“When people go to the rafflebox site, they can choose to purchase the WestJet tickets or they can add on the 50/50,” she explained.

“It’s a stay and play tournament, so the teams coming to town are staying in Pomeroy hotels and that allows us to have a portion of those room sales come back to us.”

Tickets for the raffle and progressive 50/50 are available now, through April 3, and can be found here. St.Louis Ribs will also donate $1 from every bottle sold of their garlic dill sauce to support the fundraiser from April 1-3.

The draw will take place at the Crosslink County Sportsplex on April 3 at the tournament.

Eight teams will be playing in the tournament, with two U15 Grande Prairie Knights teams playing host.