Western Australian Ice Hockey Association
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| Sport | Ice hockey |
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| Jurisdiction | Western Australia |
| Founded | February 1950 |
| Affiliation | Ice Hockey Australia |
| Headquarters | Palmyra, WA |
| President | Paul McCann |
| Secretary | Michaela Fellowes |
| Official website | |
| www |
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The Western Australian Ice Hockey Association, currently trading as Ice Hockey WA is the governing body of ice hockey in Western Australia. The Western Australian Ice Hockey Association is a branch of Ice Hockey Australia.
The Western Australian Ice Hockey Association (WAIHA) was formed as the Western Australian state branch for Ice Hockey Australia. It is responsible for organising the six state leagues across the three different age groups. It is also responsible for selecting the state teams to compete in the national tournaments.
WAIHA operates its leagues across three venues – Cockburn Ice Arena, Perth Ice Arena and the Xtreme Ice Arena. Teams are fielded in the leagues by clubs, the Hawks Ice Hockey Club which is based in Cockburn, the West Coast Ice Hockey Association which is based in Malaga, and the Northern Vikings Ice Hockey Club which is based in Mirrabooka. The associations current president is Randy Salmond.
On 22 September 1949, a prospectus was written to introduce the first ice rink to Western Australia. The first ice skating rink built in Western Australia was the Perth Ice Palais. It was located on Beaufort Street, Northbridge inside the remodeled Tivoli Theatre. The rink was being built by Ice Palais Ltd. and Bruce Carrol was the chairman of directors, who stated that even with the completion date of the rink being weeks away there were already plans by Perth sporting clubs to make ice hockey teams. The rink surface was much smaller than other rinks in Australia at only 29m (95 feet) long and 26m (85 feet)wide. Though private skating lessons first began at 9:00am 12 December 1949, the rink was officially opened at 8:00pm 14 December 1949 by, then, Perth mayor Mr. J. Totterdell. The first manager of the rink was Edson R. Banks.
The first competitive ice sport conducted by the Ice Palais Pty LTD was ice basketball and approximately 60 members of the Collegians High Sports Club began training for ice sports, assisted by Mr. H. W. White. The Collegians were the first Perth based ice sports team formed 30 January 1950, and were quickly followed by the formation of a second team called the Western Dodgers the following month. The intention was to train to play ice basketball as the rink surface was too small to play ice hockey on, being less than half of the required length of a standard ice rink. The teams would train every Sunday at the Perth Ice Palais and the Western Dodgers had the help of 2 premiership winning Victorian players, Ray Abbot and Bob Cody, for coaching the first team.
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