Two of Yellowknife’s schools are about to engage in a friendly competition that goes back decades.
On Wednesday, November 20th, the Ecole St. Patrick High School and the Ecole Sir John Franklin High School will be competing against each other in an afternoon of good-natured hockey known as the Wade Hammer Challenge Cup.
The day for both schools will begin as normal, with classes being held until the lunch break at noon. Then from, 1:00pm to 4:00pm, the rest of the day will be filled with a number of hockey games.
The girls will be playing first at 1:00, with the boys playing at 3:00. Each game will have two 20 minute breaks, and the ice will be cleaned after each period. If the games end in a tie, then it will go into a 10 minute overtime. If the game remains tied, it will be decided by a five player shootout.
This beloved hockey tradition was first started in 1985. It started as the Colonel’s Challenge Cup, as one of the main sponsors of the event, the Jason family, owned the local KFC. From its very beginning, it was designed to be just a friendly competition between the two schools. This idea came from a St Pat’s student named Wade Hammer, who was troubled by the harsh language exchanged between the student and teacher players of a particularly rough game in the Rec League.
After expressing his disappointment with both teams, Hammer put much work into creating a new match between schools that would be in better spirits. He looked for sponsors, got a team together, and discussed the idea with the student council members of both schools. The next year, the Colonel’s Cup was officially launched!
For the first 11 years of the Challenge, teachers and girls would play one period each, while the boys would play two. Eventually, the teachers decided to back out to give the girls more time to play, and that format has remained to this day.
Sadly, Wade Hammer died in 1987 after an industrial accident. To honour his memory, the event was renamed to the Wade Hammer Challenge Cup.
This event has since grown into one of the largest single-day sporting events in the NWT, and continues to foster friendship and good sportsmanship between the two schools.
