Hockey, history, sacrifice and sport at the Beaumont-Hamel Centennial Cup

There's a thought that keeps knocking around in Lt.-Col. Kyle Strong's head. He thought it this weekend at the hockey rink in Paradise. He's been thinking it for years.

These kids, these hockey players, they're the same age as those soldiers. That's all they were really, most of them, when they signed up to go to war more than a century ago.

They were just kids.

It's part of the reason the head of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment is so keen to support the Beaumont-Hamel Centennial Cup: he sees a link between hockey and history.

"There's a really good opportunity here to educate the people of Newfoundland about what the soldiers did," Strong said.

Season-ender

The Cup got its start in 2016, when John Lee, a hockey coach at Holy Spirit High in Conception Bay South, was brainstorming ideas for an end-of-year tournament.

Back when Lee played hockey, there was always a big tournament for high school teams as the season wound down. It was something for the players to look forward to, and he wanted to bring that back.

That year was the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, and the Beaumont-Hamel attack that saw hundreds of soldiers from the Royal Newfoundland Regiment mowed down in a single day.

Lee saw the hockey-history connection, too. Like Strong, he looked at his players and thought of soldiers. Within weeks, plans for a tournament took shape.

"Part of this is to help educate people, the kids and just the general public on what the regiment did," Lee said.

"Everybody fixates on Beaumont-Hamel, but there's so many other battles, there's so many other events that the regiment was involved in during the First World War that are really overshadowed."

That same year, Holy Spirt's hockey team got new jerseys to honour the regiment. On each shoulder, a caribou patch echoes the five caribou statues in European battlefields that commemorate the Royal Newfoundland Regiment's achievements and sacrifices.

Now in its fourth year, the tournament features 16 teams from around Newfoundland and an ever-growing helping of history.

Awards for individual players are named for notable members of the regiment, like Nangle, Shiwak and Ricketts.

This year, organizers identified nine descendants of wartime soldiers and highlighted the connections in the tournament programme.

And coach Lee has been drilling it into his players' heads, according to Grade 12 student Keegan Hynes, who plays for Holy Spirit.

Lee reminds them of the soldiers' sacrifice and tells them they ought to feel privileged to play in an event named in honour of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.

"If they can do that," Hynes said, "we should be able to fight our guts out just to win this tournament." 

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador