Portage Minor Hockey's Annual General Meeting was this week at the PCU Centre in Portage la Prairie.

The biggest thing announced was PMHA's ability to finish the season with a good amount of funds in a savings account. PMHA President Peter Fedak brought forth the idea of rebuilding the account, after it was depleted at the start of the 2013-14 season, which has been accomplished. Fedak explains what sort of things can now be done with the funds.

"We can start up a new program, say we have some seed money and we want to start this developmental program and something goes wrong and it fails, whoops, well we can build that back up. For teams, provide a cash float to some of the teams, it's expensive to run a team, and a lot of our managers end up out of pocket thousands of dollars. So if we can do things to help manage that, and it's important to have that reserve and look at different ways to do things."

The PMHA Board

Another big thing announced at the meeting was the elimination of PMHA's in person registration nights. Fedak explains the significance of their early online registration.

"What this does bring is spring registration, and getting that going. We know our numbers -- so in the summer when we're picking coaches -- we know how many teams we have, we know what we're going into. We can then enter into those leagues eyes wide open."

Several parents brought up the issue of more practice ice for the younger ages, as well as giving later practices -- and out of town practices -- to the Central Plains Regional teams. Fedak says it's tough to please everyone, especially with ice availability changing throughout the season with cancellations and other unforeseen events.

"What we can secure now for January is one thing, what's available in January can be a whole different picture. So we try to balance it out -- and it's all into the fees as well -- because more ice means more fees, and that does restrict some people from playing."

Leo Lapointe presenting PMHA President Peter Fedak with the cheque from Operation Red Nose

PMHA's volunteer fundraising campaign was through Operation Red Nose this year, which raised $9007.63. Fedak adds overall PMHA is very healthy with 214 players registered last season. Several other issues raised by parents were splitting ice with other teams to increase practices, new ways of splitting teams up, and how players are cut at the end of camps.