The Wallaceburg Lakers have introduced a brand new logo for next season.
The local Junior ‘C’ Hockey team introduced the new look on their brand new Facebook page, which was launched on Monday night.
Give the team a ‘Like’ by clicking, here.
It has been a busy off-season for the Wallaceburg club.
The team was purchased by a group of local investors last month.
Jim McCrae, a former team president of the team, told the Sydenham Current last month that himself and five other people bought the club.
“We more or less just turned it right back over to the community… where it should be,” he said.
The Byrne Laus Hockey Corp. were introduced as the new owners of the Lakers in April of last year, but things did not pan out. The team ended up ended in last place in the Hobbs Division, finishing with a 3-36-1 record.
“It worked in Lakeshore and stuff, but they just couldn’t seem to get a hold of it here,” McCrae said of the Byrne Laus Hockey Corp.
“So we just went and offered to buy it back, and they took it.”
With the ownership in a share holder structure, McCrae said the new group of owners is donating some shares back to the community and the team will be run by a volunteer board of directors.
McCrae said the team is also now out of debt.
“We are just going to be silent investors,” he said.
“We do have to be kept in touch with the meetings, but other than that they are free to run it how they did before. They have a clear sale right through and they should have a fairly easy operation to operate. It’s never going to be easy, but I think they will have a better chance at success.”
McCrae added: “We have been so far in debt for 10 years and last year it took us out of debt and it was a good move. We all agreed on that. We still agree on that. It’s just, the people weren’t from town and that kind of took the (impact) out of it. The investors that I talked to, that I got to help me out with, are all from Wallaceburg. There is nobody involved in this team now that is not from Wallaceburg.”
Earlier in the off-season, Rick Vancoillie was named at the team’s new head coach.
“The idea of Vancoillie was, we know he is not a logged in Junior ‘C’ coach, but what we are trying to do is get a coach in there that can actually communicate with the kids,” he said.
“It is something that is hard to do now a days because most coaches, they are from the old school and the kids aren’t, they are from the new school. We thought maybe it might be a little bit of an advancement to start
now and get it changed over.”
At their AGM last month, Skip Harvey has been elected as team president, Paul Turner was named the new vice-president, Grace Harvey was elected as secretary and Sandy Williams was voted in as the treasurer.
