Beardy’s coach ready for new challenge with Stars

While professional and junior hockey coaches tend to lead a transient life, Dale Grayston avoided that nomadic experience at the under-18 level.

The Shellbrook native spent more than two decades as head coach of the Beardy’s Blackhawks in the Saskatchewan Midget AAA Hockey League.

When the Saskatchewan Hockey Association eliminated franchises in Beardy’s and Notre Dame, after both teams no longer met the SHA’S minor hockey criteria, Grayston suddenly found himself looking for employment.

He was subsequently hired by the Battlefords Stars, and looks forward to his first new job since the 1990s.

“I see it as a new beginning for me,” says Grayston, 57. “Sometimes you need the new challenge and mine was kind of pushed towards me. I’m looking forward to seeing how we can develop players over there.”

Grayston, who is the longest-serving coach in the provincial under-18 league, established strong hockey roots in the Beardy’s First Nation, working closely with Mel Parenteau over those years.

Moving on to the Battlefords has left him with a bit of mixed emotion as it marked an end of an era at Beardy’s.

“I’ll miss a lot of the staff and a lot of the volunteers and the community,” admits Grayston. “You spend 23 years there — our team was there for 25 and I was there for 23 as the head coach — and you just create those good relationships.

“Staying in Beardy’s all those years, I always knew the core coming back. You knew their personalities. You knew what they still needed to develop. Going over to Battleford, I don’t know a lot about the returning players and some of the players that are coming in. The big thing is to create that trust and really be honest with them and create that where they’re really honest back, when you get the trust factor really going. That will be the challenge, to create trust first and then we can really tie into developing players.”

Grayston said the SHA no longer sees the league’s programs merely as teams but as part of minor hockey associations.

“The minor hockey numbers in Beardy’s were getting lower,” he said. “There were a number of reasons why we were denied, but we ran such a unique program. I don’t think there’ll ever be another one like it in the league, trying to support a lot of First Nations youth. We’ll see how it goes now, what the numbers are in the league that way. It was a little bit of a shock in November when we were told about it. We had to worry about the 20 guys that were left. We had to make sure we could do everything we could to make their season enjoyable.”

Grayston moves away from a scenario where Beardy’s had most of its players commuting from outside the community.

“This will be a different experience, with 20 players all within 10 minutes of each other,” he said. “I’m looking forward to trying to support them that way.”

As the league prepares for next season, Grayston said everything is still “up in the air” and that Hockey Canada “really dictates when we can return.”

“We were told, each team, to just be prepared for any scenario,” he said. “You may not have a camp. You may have to go right into a regular season. There’s too much uncertainty to really know. The big thing is to prepare the year plan so you cover the bases and adjust it once the decision is made when we start.

“It’s not just hockey. It’ll be interesting when we get close to normal again. I don’t know when it’ll happen.”