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The Billeting Life: MJHL Team Looks for Local Families to Take in Players

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Billeting Crop
Gail Chornoboy, Kara Packet, and Dwight Heppner

Manitoba’s newest MJHL team, the Niverville Nighthawks, is gearing up for its first season. Although there are many moving parts to getting the team ready to hit the ice, right now one of the top priorities is finding billet homes for all the players.

Gail Chornoboy is the billeting coordinator for the Nighthawks. Her job is finding families who are willing to take one or more of these 16- to 20-year-old men into their home for the hockey season. Training camp starts around mid-August and the season may continue as late as May if the team makes the playoffs.

When the team is complete, there will be 20 to 25 players and each will fill out a questionnaire indicating what they hope to find in a billeting family. Each prospective family will fill out a similar questionnaire describing what type of player they hope to host.

Chornoboy will then take a tour of each potential home to ensure that it is appropriate for a player. The team members each need their own bedroom with a window and the bedroom must have a place for the player to keep his belongings.

Once the questionnaires are filled out and the home tours are done, Chornoboy and head coach Kelvin Cech will spend some time deciding which player will go to which home. This process is critically important as the players will truly become a part of the family over the hockey season.

Not only that, but some of these players will return to their billet home for up to four years.

Anyone can billet, says Chornoboy, and players can request what they believe will make them feel most at home. Some players, for example, may specifically request a family with young children as they may have young siblings at home and want to have surrogate brothers and sisters.

“I want to hear the good stuff, but more importantly if it’s not going well I want to hear that,” says Chornoboy. “Kelvin and myself will talk about it with the family and the young men and see how to help the families and the young men work it out or we will change their home.”

Billet families get a stipend to help cover the costs of their temporary family member. Chornoboy says that this money can be especially useful to cover the cost of groceries.

“Hockey players eat a lot!” she says. “Being a billet family host, you will not be making money, but you will be making a great new relationship with your family.”

Families are not responsible for getting their players to or from practices, although they can if they want to. Some players do arrive with their own vehicles and often they will help each other get to and from practices and games.

Some of the players are still school-age and will be enrolled at Niverville High School. Those who have graduated from high school will be encouraged to take university courses or, if they are not attending university, find a job within the community.

Chornoboy says that a billet family ultimately has two obligations: feed their young man and make him feel like he’s part of the family.

Cech agrees that one of the primary goals is making the player feel like welcome.

“The biggest thing is just having a friendly home and a friendly family to live with,” says Cech. “These guys start out as strangers when they go into these homes, but that’s over pretty quick and they become like a member of the family.”

But it’s important, too, Cech points out, to remember that trades happen and sometimes a player may move along.

“Whether a player is [in a billet home] for two months or two years or four years, we just want a good, positive situation for them to live in,” he says.

Cech feels that a good billet home can even have an effect on a player’s performance.

“It’s a place that they go back to after the game and vent their thoughts, whether it’s excitement or frustration,” he says. “Hockey is a difficult game and where you live and how you conduct yourself off the ice certainly has an impact on how you perform on the ice.”

The Niverville Nighthawks will be held to a strict code of conduct by their coach. Cech says that he expects his players to be valuable members of the community and that each player’s behaviour represents the entire team and community.

“We hold ourselves to a very high standard,” Cech says. “It’s important to me that the players enjoy their teammates and spend time with their teammates away from the rink when their coach isn’t around, but they are coming to town to play hockey, to develop, and to move on in their hockey career and their life. There are a lot of life lessons to be learned.”

Chornoboy echoes this sentiment.

“We as a community want the players to feel like they are at home, and we want everyone to have an awesome experience,” she says. “The young men and their families will become part of your family. This will be a lasting experience for everyone.”

Testimonials

Dwight Hirst is one of 35 Group A owners of the Nighthawks—essentially, a shareholder—and he is also a former NCAA hockey player who billeted with two different families during his young career.

Hirst says that players can get real benefits from the home in which they’re billeted.

“When these kids walk into a new home, they may feel like an outsider,” Hirst says. “But they soon realize that living with a billet family is like having a second mom or a second dad. Where I billeted, there were always boys out playing road hockey and I became like an older brother in the household or on the block.”

Oftentimes, billet families attend games and cheer for their new family member. Hirst says that this can be really helpful to players, many of whom are away from home for the first time in their lives.

He adds that the billeted players can often be an inspiration for young kids in the family. Playing ball hockey in the basement with an MJHL player could just be what prompts a child to want to be a hockey player themselves one day.

Hirst became so close with his billet families in his youth that years later they both attended his wedding.

Dwight Heppner of Niverville says something similar: he has attended the wedding of some of his family’s billets.

Heppner’s experience with billeting began as a child when his parents began to take in hockey players in his hometown of Winkler. His family billeted Winkler Flyers team members for 15 years and Heppner says it was a terrific experience from start to finish.

“Suddenly, I had an older brother for the winter, Heppner says. “They spent a ton of time with us kids, playing street hockey outside or mini sticks downstairs or even just video games. It was a really cool experience for myself and for my family.”

Heppner still keeps in contact with some players who billeted with his family. Some, he says, have become lifelong friends.

“You see each other later in life and it’s really cool how those bonds never go away, because they are like family.”

Kara Packet of Roland is a busy mom, and she loves billeting too. Her family has billeted players from the Winkler Flyers for two years and she has really appreciated how it brought them closer to the community as a whole.

Packet says that she still talks to her first billet every day.

“The connection never ends,” she says. “I had three kids of my own and now I have five.”

Another benefit for Packet and her family is having someone around to help with chores.

“I don’t touch yard work [while the billet is here],” says Packet. “They mow grass, put up Christmas lights, help shovel snow, unload the dishwasher, vacuum etc. It really takes a load off my husband and I, who both work full-time.”

These young men are also role models for Packet’s kids. Her children look up to the hockey players and aspire to be like them.

“There have been no downsides to [billeting players],” Packet says. “I don’t know what I would do without them.”

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