Rivals line up for annual broomball challenge
Clyde Fraser is glad the Superbowl is over. With that distraction aside, he says the buzz is about the next great sporting event – the annual broomball battle between the West Side Community Centre and the Northend Recreation Centre.
This year marks the seventh anniversary for the Jean MacLeod Proudfoot Memorial Broomball Challenge. It will be held Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Pictou County Wellness Centre.
Last year the North End defeated the five-time champs from the Westside for the first time.
Fraser, coach for the Northend team, said it’s always fun to take part in the competition – “even more so now that we’re winners.”
He said they have more than half their lineup coming back this year.
“I’d say we are in good shape to defend our title,” Fraser said. “We have a lot of fun. It’s a somewhat friendly competition.”
Frank Proudfoot, who helps organize the event, named in honour of his mother, said spectators can expect some new faces on the Westside team, with many of the older players retired to bring in fresh blood and, he hopes, fresh victory.
Competition aside, Proudfoot said it’s a good way to get families out.
He said he has some great memories himself of playing at the Westside Community Centre.
“It was different back then. We just went right after school.”
He said they took their skates to school during the winter so they could skate or play hockey afterward and in the summer there was a ball field.
Now with parents more cautious about making sure their children are supervised, he said, the community centres have become family gathering places.
The broomball game, he believes, builds on that.
“That was the idea of this game. It would give a chance for people with kids for the kids to come out and see the adults having fun.”
He also believes that, after taking part, people are more likely to volunteer.
“Kids are spending so much time in their rooms just playing video games, it’s good to get them out playing,” he said.