The Western Hockey League strives to promote and foster a welcoming environment in communities close to our 23 clubs in Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest. Every team has the creative freedom to allow their players and staff to work with the organizations and groups that they are most passionate about. The end goal is to create and maintain long-lasting relationships and ongoing partnerships within their community.
Through the McSweeney’s WHL Community Collective, we aim to highlight these outstanding initiatives done by each club throughout the season.
The Portland Winterhawks are covering territory all around the Rose City to ensure everyone gets a chance to experience Hawkey.
As part of a longstanding partnership with local Boys and Girls Clubs, the team visited five chapters in the area in 2025-26 to meet kids where they’re at and introduce some new fans to the sport.
The monthly visits have seen the team spend afternoons with roughly 400 young people.
“Some of the kids know us from previous seasons, some of the kids are new,” Winterhawks Manager, Community Relations and Communications Alyssa Mehalovich said. “Sometimes it’s arts and crafts, sometimes it’s a history lesson. Sometimes they’re going to the game room and playing pool with the kids, you know, and then the last 30 minutes, the kids transition to what our boys do.
That’s where we teach them street hockey, how to play. Sometimes it’s outside on the street, sometimes it’s in a gym- it kind of just depends on which club we’re going to, but it gives our boys the opportunity to be incorporated into the kids’ lives, which is really important, and it kind of breaks the ice a little bit too. By the time they get to hockey, everyone’s best friends, and they all just want to just play and have fun.”
Throughout the season, Winterhawks players also put on their coaching hats for the team’s learn-to-play program, which sees the team provide free gear and the city provide free ice time for six learning sessions.
“A lot of the beginning is just kind of like learning how to stay up, and if you fall, learning how to get up,” Mehalovich added. “Towards the end of the last couple of sessions, you’ll see some players put the nets out there (and) we’ll try to get a little scrimmage going. It’s a really, really great partnership because the kids get to learn a sport and have access to a sport that they might not otherwise be able to access at all, and then our boys, they get to kind of step outside of the hockey realm for a second and just get to play and have fun.”
The Winterhawks and Boys and Girls Clubs have spent the last five seasons building the partnership and look forward to growing together in the future.
