Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League

Broncos Hold Annual General Meeting

The downfall of not making the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League playoffs has stung the Humboldt Broncos long after the ice was melted in the Elgar Petersen Arena.

Revealed Monday night at their annual general meeting was that the team lost another $48,000, much coming from the team’s first playoff-less season in 35 years.

Season ticket revenue was down $12,000 while even just two post season games in the 2014-15 season generated $15,000 in revenue.

The bright spot, the team is entering the season with stability at General Manager and Head Coach with Darcy Haugan, Brayden Klimosko enters his fourth year as Assistant Coach.

Speaking of stability, Kim Brockman brought that to the office manager position with the club but after three years she will move on to a new career.

“That was huge,” president Jamie Brockman said after the meeting at the Uniplex. “It really did stabilize a lot of the stuff in the office. She was instrumental in streamlining a lot of that stuff and we’re definitely grateful setting that path for the future of the organization here.”

Her replacement is Christina Haugan.

The Broncos’ fundraising efforts are paying off on another optimistic note, largely in part to their ‘Seed for Green, Harvest for Gold’ field project. They increased their raised funds to $187,299 up from $146,331 in 2015. The field itself earned the team just under $44,000. They are hoping to get this year’s barley crop harvested this week.

Ad revenue also increased nicely up to $165,000 from $152,000.

To execute these initiatives volunteers and board members are crucial, two more were welcomed officially Monday. Kevin Garinger and Darren Duell were nominated and accepted during the meeting.

“They’ve actually been with us for a couple months but you can’t make it official until an AGM,” explained Brockman. “They’ve definitely worked behind the scenes bringing a lot of value, they bring a lot of leadership and experience so anytime somebody thinks they can help or they are willing to help it doesn’t matter what time of year, we will take them.”

They now stand at eight members.

So with increases in some key areas the pressure simply goes back to getting the team competitive in Haugan’s second year.

“We always try to budget without the playoffs, we want the playoffs to be a bonus,” Brockman continued. “We have to be realistic, a couple playoff rounds adds a lot to the bottom line. When we went to the league final in Dean’s(Brockman) last year we added one-hundred and some thousand to the bottom line.”

“That would go a long way to taking away that $48,000 loss this year.”

Brockman also reported at the meeting that this will be his final year as the board president. He has two years left on his term, with his final year he would like to simply assist the new leader before stepping away.

“There is a lot to learn, there’s a lot to go through, it can be a thankless job at times but it’s definitely a rewarding job too. We have our ups and downs but the ups are way higher than the downs ever are,” Brockman concluded.

The Broncos will now turn their focus to the 2016 training camp, that begins on Thursday.

YOU CAN HEAR MORE FROM BROCKMAN WHO SPOKE FOLLOWING THE AGM.