I hope this message finds everyone well and enjoying their summer. I know everyone is eagerly awaiting news pertaining to the return of hockey and please be assured as soon as we receive any further information we will share with all of you.
It is my honor to be stepping in as the next President of Oshawa Minor Hockey
Association. I want to say thank you to Adrian Vanhemmen for his dedication and
commitment as President which I know has been appreciated by the hockey
community here in Oshawa.
For those who do not know me, I have been a part of Oshawa Minor Hockey for the past four years now, working in various roles on both teams and the Board of Directors. I am an HTCP Level III Certified Trainer and over the last three seasons I have worked with the U15 (Bantam) AAA, U16 (Minor Midget) AAA and U18 (Midget) AAA teams for the 2003 (combined with 2002 this past year) age groups as the team trainer. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in this role and will continue to be active at the team level moving forward. This past year, while on the executive, I served as Head Trainer and oversaw the Risk Management portfolio for the Association.
In my personal/professional life, I work as a Teaching Assistant at York University while completing my own Graduate studies. After finishing my Master’s Degree in Political Science, I was accepted into the Ph.D program and continue to pursue my Doctorate on a now part time basis while also working to earn a degree in Athletic Therapy and eventually become a Certified Athletic Therapist. On a personal note, I have played hockey since the age of seven while growing up in Whitby and continue to hit the ice as a goalie whenever I have a chance!
There is a long and storied history of minor hockey in Oshawa and I hope that tradition continues to be strengthened over the coming years. It is certainly no secret that our Association has struggled in recent times in terms of on ice results, but I do firmly believe that over the past couple of years positive steps have been taken to help improve this situation. New development initiatives across all ages and levels have been implemented and this has helped improve the overall quality of hockey here in Oshawa. We have already seen some of these results - our AAA program winning percentage has risen significantly over the past three years and this past season we had two teams play in OMHA Finals. Our U16 AAA team won the silver medal and our U12 AE team was deemed Co-Champions (after they were unable to complete their series due to the pandemic). Furthermore, seven players from the U16 AAA team were selected in the OHL Priority Selection Draft this year, and several other teams had successful winning seasons and/or playoff runs.
These accomplishments are not due to any one person but rather the result of a collaborative effort on the part of coaching staffs, parents, the players themselves, development officials and the executives involved in running the organization. It is my belief that by working together and having input from all of those involved within minor hockey, we will become stronger overall. While the work is far from finished, I feel that our recent successes can be looked at as a stepping stone and a sign of positive things to come for us as an Association.
As President I intend to do everything in my power to continue moving us forward and building off of what has been started these past few years. This will no doubt require a lot of work, time and dedication, but I believe that this is a task that I am up to and I look forward to getting started.
I hope to see you all around the rink at some point in the not too distant future!
All the best,
Taylor Collins
President, Oshawa Minor Hockey Association