Youth: Tour­na­ments and training camps cancelled

Image information: The health of the players and staff comes first - Copyright: GEPA pictures/Walter Luger

After various organisers and federations cancelled, ÖEHV Men's Sports Director Roger Bader, in consultation with the Executive Board, also decided to exercise caution due to rising coronavirus case numbers. All youth national team training camps have therefore been cancelled.

"Günther Ropatsch (note: ÖEHV Vice-President for sporting matters) and I have discussed the current situation in detail and have come to the conclusion that, in order to protect the health of everyone involved, we should cancel the upcoming training camps and tournaments," explains ÖEHV Men's Sports Director Roger Bader.

The background to this is the increasingly rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. For this reason, host nation Denmark had already cancelled the U18 tournament a month ago. A scouting camp had been planned as an alternative programme for this age group, but this will now also not take place.

Norway, where the U16 team had been due to travel, also announced last Monday that it had to cancel the tournament scheduled for February. For the U15 and U19 teams, which would have played against their peers in Hungary and France respectively, the federation decided not to send the players.

Roger Bader: "We very much regret these cancellations. Our goal and our endeavour are to develop the national teams and enable them to play as many games as possible at the very highest level. At the same time, it is our responsibility to safeguard the health of the players and staff. This always takes top priority. Based on our experiences at the U20 World Championship in Edmonton, we do not want to risk possible infection and further spread within the players' clubs."