Today we have spent many hours in consultation with our local facilities, as well as researching other facilities/associations within our province in regards to spectators in attendance. We have been advised that it is our responsibility to ensure spectators follow the arena capacity and social distance rules.
Our main focus is to keep the players and team staff in a safe environment while under our care. We also need to provide space for our evaluators to continue the tryout process. Each arena has a different spectator capacity in their viewing areas and thus it becomes very difficult to work around these differences in a consistent manner.
GPAC has now made the difficult decision to keep the no spectator policy in place until further notice.
Looking around the province there have been several other associations that have moved to the no spectator policy after issues arose and shutdowns of the evaluation process threatened due to spectators not properly social distancing.
We realize that this decision will not be the most popular with our membership, but at the end of the day it's about the players and keeping them safe and on the ice.
