The Carlyle Cougars are back in the Big Six Senior Hockey League.
The Big Six board of directors voted unanimously at their annual spring meeting March 29 to accept Carlyle’s application to rejoin the league in the 2016-17 season. The Carlyle Cougars were a member of the Big Six Hockey League from the 1960-61 season until they folded following the 2012-13 campaign.
Dallas Lequyer, president of the Carlyle PureChem Cougars senior hockey team, said in order to come back the executive had to pay their outstanding fines owed to the league as well as three years' worth of membership dues, which amounted to a total of $2,900. He said they also had to make a five-minute presentation to the Big Six board of directors on how they will be running the team and what they have managed to already put in place.
“We have a very strong executive board now,” said Lequyer, noting the lack of a board helped lead to their earlier demise. “We’ve got a couple of really good title sponsors to help with the team. We’ve had a tremendous amount of support with the players, so we’ve got 35 or 37 people who have expressed interest in wanting to come out with the team. So, fielding a very competitive team is going to be easy to do.”
Lequyer said Element Technical Services has signed on to be a team sponsor and will provide the club with new jerseys and socks. He said the team’s title sponsor, PureChem Services, provided financial support to help cover the cost of rejoining the league as well as purchasing new pant shells for the players.
“We had to pay three years of dues upfront this year just to secure our team and show them that we are serious about this,” he said. “We’re all paid up for the next three years, all of our fines are paid (and) everything is good to go with the league, so we have no issues at this point.”
