After a two-year hiatus, junior hockey will return to Summerland as the Jets begin preparations for their inaugural season in the BC Hockey Conference (BCHC).
The Jets currently have three players committed to play for them in the 2026-27 season, including defenceman Kruz Lyseng, Dayton Koldyk, who played 12 games in the KIJHL (now the BCHC) with the Princeton Posse, and goaltender Sharky Nowek, who has played six games in the BCHL with the Penticton Vees and Brooks Bandits, as well as 19 games in the KIJHL with the Princeton Posse. The Jets also acquired defenceman Logan Bates in a trade with the Coastal Tsunami in exchange for future considerations.
The Jets continued their search for players at a recent ID camp, with Jets head coach and general manager Robert Dirk saying he wants to have a team full of passionate players.
“This weekend was about finding players we feel fit the mold of what we want to be, which we have done, and we will continue to do that. We want our guys to play hard and play with passion. To me, guys who play hard and have passion are warriors, and you want a team full of warriors. That’s what I told them before this all started, and some of them have done exactly that.”
While the BCHC is a Hockey Canada-sanctioned league, interest in playing in unsanctioned leagues has been growing ever since the British Columbia Hockey League (BCHL) decided to operate independently of Hockey Canada, as well as after a recent decision by eight former KIJHL teams to form their own league, the Western International Junior Hockey League (WIJHL). Dirk says these unsanctioned leagues formed because they didn’t like the rules imposed by Hockey Canada.
“These unsanctioned leagues started because somebody didn’t like that their son or daughter got cut, so they said, ‘I’m going to go do my own thing.’ In life, you don’t always get what you want, so you’ve got to keep working. When things don’t go well, you buckle down and turn things around. Hockey Canada is the governing body of hockey in Canada. I think everybody should fall under that umbrella.”
While the Jets are seeing support from the community, the same could not be said about Summerland’s former junior hockey team. Dirk says the Summerland Steam didn’t support the community, which led to its eventual sale, and stressed the importance of the team being involved in the community.
“There’s a lot of people who are sponsoring the team, buying Founders Club brochures and advertising with the team. The community is slowly getting behind the team again. When the Steam left, it wasn’t just over one year. There were a couple of lean years. To me, a hockey team and a hockey community are intertwined. One has to support the other, and the other has to do the same. You support each other. I wasn’t here two years ago, but I’ve heard the stories where the Steam hockey club didn’t support the community, and vice versa. We are looking to change that. Our board is basically all Summerland residents, people who live in the community, people who care about the community, so we are going to be a part of the community.”
Preparations for the season will continue with the team signing several players, but they also hope to add players who are cut from other leagues.
“Training camp starts Aug. 29, so we still have another month to find some more quality players, and we’ll stay at it, but it’s an ever-changing thing. No team is set until Jan. 10. That’s the last day for Hockey Canada to have your rosters in. Every team makes changes, and there’ll be a lot of changes from the middle of August to the end of September when there is that so-called trickle-down effect, when NHL teams send junior players back and people at Western League (WHL) camps get cut. We’ll wait to see what happens, and hopefully we can get one, two, three or four of those guys.”
The Jets will open their season on Sept. 18 when they welcome the Osoyoos Coyotes to the Summerland Arena.
