(Photo Credit: Iceberg Hockey Tournament, Facebook)

By Abby Zieverink

Hockey tournament

2022 Iceberg Tournament raises $17,000 for ed-psych evaluations

Apr 5, 2022 | 6:00 AM

Around $17,000 was raised this weekend at the 2022 Iceberg Tournament in support of mental health initiatives, specifically ed-psych evaluations for youth in the community.

The annual Iceberg tournament took place April 1-3 at the Crosslink County Sportsplex.

After being forced to cancel the fundraiser in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions, Co-chair tournament director Tara Melezko says it was amazing to see how many people came out to support.

“There were people everywhere. There were crowds in the stands and they were cheering, people were happy and the hockey was great! I couldn’t have asked for a better tournament,” she explained.

The $17,000 raised will be divided between the local education foundations – which will then be given to the Grande Prairie Public School Division, the Grande Prairie and District Catholic Schools and the Peace Wapiti Public School Division.

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Melezko says she was blown away at the outpour of community support for the tournament fundraiser.

“It was the most we’ve made ever; our first year was around $11,000 our second year was around $10,000 and of course COVID, so this was huge,” she said.

“When I had started, I had said my hope was, that we could give each of the school foundations $1,000. So it looks like we are going to be able to give them a lot more.”

She says the money has and will continue to help a lot of students in the region.

“The minimum price I’ve found in town here (for ed-psych evaluations) is $1,700, but they can be up to $3,000 depending on where you go and the waitlists (for evaluations) are endless,” she added.

“If we don’t get these ed-psychs more out there, then these kids are just going to keep struggling, and that is what we do not want. We want these kids to have that door open for them so they can go out and succeed.”

Melezko gives an extended thank you to everyone who supported the fifth annual Iceberg tournament this year including the host teams, the teams who travelled, local sponsors, volunteers, parents and the entire Grande Prairie community.

“I know Grande Prairie has always been there to step up and help out and they sure did again this time.”

She adds that both teams, Hinton OK Tire and KC Sabres, donated their $1000 and $500 cash prizes back in support of the ed-psych evaluations.

Their hope for next year is to make the tournament even bigger with more teams on the ice and bigger donations to help get more students off the waitlists for ed-psych evaluations.

To date, nearly $50,000 has been raised from the Iceberg Tournament.