Minor hockey organizations in Lambton County will benefit from a $25,000 Legacy Fund from the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge.
Each of the ten minor hockey organizations in Lambton County will get $2,500.
Tourism Sarnia-Lambton (TSL) Executive Director Mark Perrin said there are six different areas that the funding can support.
"Growth and development is obviously a key one within the area, but we always want to try to attract newcomers to the sport as well as coaching development, referee development, building hockey in the community for these organizations and overall we're trying to get more organizations to look at tourism principles as well," he said.
Perrin said the organizations were shocked and excited about the funding.
"It's substantial. I think when we're talking to minor hockey organizations there's a lot of things that they would like to do but the funding isn't always there, so $2,500 is a good amount of funding to really build experiences and development and even some of the barriers they face and new programming," he said.
Perrin said when bidding on large events for the region it comes down to how the community will benefit.
"You want the long lasting impact of how it can build for years to come and just carry on, hopefully growing the impact of the World Under 17 that was hosted here and just have the longevity of kind of a remembrance," he said.
In addition to the legacy fund, Tourism Sarnia-Lambton says the tournament created $2.85 million in economic impact.
"Anytime you can create that kind of economic impact for our region, it's huge. It really carried not only the last quarter of the year, boosted numbers significantly for us," he said.
In May, it was announced the hockey challenge generated nearly $4 million in economic revenue.
"We've seen great increase in numbers, especially compared to neighbouring regions this year, so kind of riding the success of that tournament into 2025 has been really good for us as a whole," Perrin said.
The hockey challenge was held from November 1 to 9 in 2024 and saw Canada White win the gold medal game.
