The Ritchie Community League Rink is a volunteer-run and operated rink. The city does not provide staff or equipment to prepare or maintain the ice surfaces. RCL volunteers put in hundreds of hours (typically more than 400) to prepare the area and flood, shovel, and maintain the ice.
Scroll through the many tasks listed below that are required to keep the rink safe and fun, and sign up to be part of the magic!
Rink Coordinator
Seasonal: Annual from mid-Oct to March
Do you enjoy herding cats, organizing schedules, and connecting people with what they need to be successful?
We're looking for a Rink Coordinator to help us finish this season and plan for next season.
What to expect:
Liaise between the Programs Director (the board), Rink Lead and volunteers.
Schedule rink key holders and snow shovellers, arrange for volunteer orientation, and provide updates on openings/closures.
Post updates on rink hours, openings and closures.
If you're keen and enjoy connecting with the community, we’d love to have you on board! Help us run the rink smoothly.
Interested? Visit our Sign-up page for information and forms to join.
Rink Communications Coordinator
Looking for two people to help coordinate the communication needs for the rink and skating area. The League is looking to change how it manages rink safety, ice maintenance, and volunteer coordination.
A one-hour overview or training session will be provided.
Communicating with the rink crew may be necessary from time to time, and the league is looking into investing in digital signs so that updates on the rink's status can be posted in a timely manner and done remotely.
We are looking for two people who can:
Post on Facebook community pages to share the current rink status (open; partially open; or closed due to snow, temperature, or maintenance)
Post updates to Ritchie and Hazeldean Community League sites
Take pictures and build fun videos of snow removal and rink flooding.
Sign up
Rink Key Holders
Looking for four to six people to help coordinate opening the gate, turning on the lights at sunset and closing the gate at the end of the evening. The League is looking to change how it manages rink safety, ice maintenance, and volunteer coordination.
A half-hour overview or training session will be provided; volunteers will be assigned keys or code and agree to code of conduct. Any league membership will be required for insurance coverage. Note in comments what you can commit to (days of week, am, lights or pm - details below).
Tasks
Opening Gate: Daily opening is at about 9am when the temperature is below zero but not below -20. Complete a quick inspection of ice to ensure safe and ready. If snowing, wait until snow stops and outer area is cleared. If outer area is cleared but the rink is not, close the rink (using the pushers that have closure sign at player bench gates) but keep gate open.
Lights: Daily, rink lights are turned on at sunset (~5pm). If the temperature is dropping below -20, leave lights off and close up gate. Light switch is inside the equipment room - coordinating programmable switch install would be an incredible asset (are you the electrician who can figure it out for us?)
Closing: Daily at about 9pm, unless rink crew is on ice scraping/flooding. Complete a quick check inside to ensure no one is there, check for garbage/belongings.
It's not expected that everyone on the rink crew goes out when it has snowed to remove the snow but it would be nice to have 4-6 volunteers to help after a major snow event. Assist as you can, when you can.
Sign up
After the snow falls - remove snow
Generally speaking the gate will be open to remove snow after the snow stops.
If the snow stops at 8 pm, the gate will remain closed that night and removal will begin the next morning starting at 10am or whenever a rink crew lead can open the gate.
Snow removal starts with outer area, rink last. Yes, this is by design.
Rink remains closed until all the snow is removed.
All are welcome to push and shovel - tools are provided. How to?
In the rink, snow needs to be pushed to the north side into mini burb line, then we use the snowthrower to throw the burb over the boards. If there are enough volunteers, this can be done by hand.
Those who have been orientated to operate the snow thrower will do so to assist taking snow off the rink.
For outer rink area, snow needs to be pushed towards the fence, again into a burb line so snow thrower can throw the pile through fence.
There are scrapers for our volunteers to use. When snow is moved into a line in the rink (as seen below) or into a line in the outer rink area, the snowthrower comes out and moves it off the surface.
A scraper then cleans up after the snowthower (the wheels like snow) and shovels used to remove the last little bits.
Creating a mini burb line for the snowthrower.
A good little workout.
Scraping after skating
Ice scraping is for anyone who is using the rink and there late at night. It generally happens in the evening after skating is done for the day. Those of you who skate know how important this is.
Ideally two to four people, every other night or when needed.
No need to sign up, just pitch in.
If you’re scraping the rink, please do the entire rink and then remove the snow with the shovels.
This is critical so that snow piles are not left to fuse to the ice surface.
If we leave those piles, we lose the ‘best community rink’ status :)
Rink flooding
The Rink is flooded (resurfaced) weekly, every Friday before the weekend. The outer area is flooded (resurfaced) as needed, anywhere from weekly to bi-weekly.
Before flooding, the surface needs to be cleaned (scraping). Ideally 4 people come out at 8:30pm to help prep the surface and help set-up flooding equipment.
Pre-season prep
Before we can build ice we need a crew to help prep the area. In October, a call will go out for volunteers to help. The list includes: tennis courts are taken down, entire surface is removed of debris and leaves, and rink benches are put in place.\
It takes a couple snow falls so snow burbs cab be built (for court area), and then flooding can begin.
To make the ice foundation, it takes rink crew leads a good three nights in a row when temperatures are -10 and there's no wind or snow. That window can be small which is why there is never really a firm start date. We will be looking for volunteers to help with equipment set-up and storing.