Following a trial run in May that was hugely successful the Cote St. Luc Minor Hockey Association is good to go with a new hockey development program for the coming season. This is under the Avalanche Kids Hockey Development Program that was initiated several seasons back by Vinnie Matteo. Ariel Davidson Aintabi will be serving as the General Manager of the program in Cote St. Luc. The Avalanche Developmental Hockey Program will be starting in September and is for kids ages 5-11 who otherwise would not be able to play in mainstream minor hockey.
Davidson Aintabi initially approached Matteo concerning her son Yaakov Aintabi, now seven, who has fine motor and gross motor issues and the regular minor hockey experience would not serve his needs. He was introduced to the sport in the sessions in Pierrefonds and embraced skating and the game of hockey. There were two other families from Cote St. Luc that participated in the Pierrefonds sessions and that paved the way for the exploratory session at Samuel Moskovitch Arena in May. In that event there was a group of over 20 participants and that amount has tripled for the inaugural campaign with 60 players already to go. All the participants from May have signed on and were rapidly joined by numerous others interested in the program.
The program is especially welcoming to to newly immigrated families and low income families. The Imagbe family for example, arrived in March of 2018 from Edo State in Nigeria and brothers Declan aged eight and six year-old Dionne have also taken to their new country’s national sport.
“This is not just a hockey development program it is a family,” Ariel Davidson Aintabi said. “The list is a big mixture of Religious Jewish families, secular Jews, immigrants, some refugees and even two Ukrainian families.”