Summerland senior hockey players support cancer fighting teammates with racy calendar

Some South Okanagan senior hockey players are rallying around their teammates who are battling cancer.

The Summerland Golden Jets are a collection of hockey players from all around the South Okanagan. They recently got together and posed for some racy photos to put into a calendar they are selling to support Hockey Fights Cancer.

Jets hockey player Brad Rauer says the idea came up earlier in the season when the team found out some of their fellow team members were fighting cancer.

“We learned we had a few people on the frontline fight against cancer and started bouncing around ideas in the dressing room about what we could do. When I mentioned a calendar, some of the guys said, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ But we had 12 guys step up and some played it pretty straight and other took it with a bit more of a poetic license, if you can call it that, on the spoof of the fireman calendars,” Rauer says.

The team helped cover the printing costs in order to ensure 100 per cent of the proceeds could be donated to Hockey Fights Cancer in the name of the team.

Rauer says the team was just doing what it usually does to help out, having donated money to minor hockey in Summerland as well as other community driven causes.

“This cancer fight hits a little closer to home. We skate, play, sweat, curse and carry-on with one another three mornings a week so there wasn’t much to think about- we were going to do something to help,” Rauer says.

The calendars can be purchased at Maple Roch and Breakaway Brewing in Summerland at a cost of $10.

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