Icebox YXE - Saskatoon

When we arrived at the warehouse the owner took us on a tour which revealed offices, the basement, and the warehouse section. A large white shiny wall, with a big sliding door, piqued some curiosity in the group. “What is that?” was answered casually with “It’s an ice cream freezer”. The next question was “Does it work?” and this question was not without motive - we were after all a group of hockey parents! The response to this question was “It should!” Little did we know that that answer would lead us to where we are today!

And so, why the Ice Box?

The Ice Box provides a space for athletes, coaches, trainers, teams and clubs to grow, practice and improve in their sport of choice, personal fitness and well-being. We felt that the community could benefit from our facility and decided to open our little project to the public. We already had the ice surface up and running, added a basketball court and then sought out the expertise of a trainer so help select some equipment for the training area. That was all we needed. Or so we thought!

We started small; following the guidelines required by Covid-19 protocols. The ice surface was only open for small groups. As the restrictions for Covid-19 began to loosen, we opened the basketball court and a few groups began to use it. Each time the guidelines for gathering were expanded we found that there were more and more people accessing our facility. When schools announced that there would be no extra-curricular sports until after Christmas and there were no gyms to rent, things really got interesting for us.

We have been working with an extremely high number of clubs in Saskatoon to accommodate their groups for practice and training.  The high demand for our facility led us to add a second court. Equipment delivery issues have, on occasion, been a challenge, but we will have space available for training time for a number of sports.

We never expected to see this kind of need in Saskatoon, but we are pushing forward to be the place for athletes to train - to get better, to grow, and to succeed,  It has been a great ride, a lot of fun and a ton of work to get to where we are today. We would not change a thing over the past 6 months. 

Welcome to the house that Covid built, where our motto is “Don’t be Afraid to Succeed!”