World Broomball Championships a success in Regina

It’s been a packed house at the Co-operators Centre all week for the World Broomball Championships, with teams from all over the world.

Don Black, president of the Sask. Broomball Association and chair of the tournament, called the event pretty successful – especially when it comes to the facility.

“Everyone loves it, the fact that everybody is here in one building and they can watch other teams. In a lot of countries they have to go to two or three different rinks, so this is absolutely great.”

Black said this is the first time the tournament has been held in the prairies, and with 48 teams from seven different countries, there were the largest number of countries to come to a world championship in North America.

The Ferrara brothers, Mark, Jeff, and Jarad, are on team Australia. They had to travel for 30 hours to get to Regina.

 “The first flight was Vancouver, then you have a seven-hour layover in Vancouver, and then two and a half hours after that,” recited Mark.

But, Mark said it was worth it. “We love Regina, we love broomball, we love Canada, we want to come back, we want to play again.”

They had nothing but good things to say about the facility, The Co-Operators Centre, as well.

“You can be in the same complex and you can watch other games, you can be around other people, you can see everything,” said Jeff.

The past week in Regina has been unseasonably warm, but it’s still a bit cool for Jarad.

“We’ve got a couple of team members from the Australian capital in Canberra and they got sort of temperatures like this right in their winter, but yeah, we’re from Sydney so it’s a bit different for us.”

Jarad said he liked being in a province where broomball is a fairly big sport.

“Just to see the sport in a much bigger sort of light is really, really encouraging, it’s really fun, and we’d love to do it again.”

The three have been to other world championships and said this tournament in Regina compares favourably.