With no games on the horizon for at least the next few weeks, the U18 AAA Warriors have sent their players home.

Warriors head coach Trevor Weisgerber said they made the decision over the weekend.

“It’s never a good sign when you’re sending guys home this early,... but the announcement that there will be no more games until at least late March, we decided we’re going to shut it down for the time being,” a disappointed Weisgerber said. “If there was some miracle where they decided that we could play games before that or came out with something else, then obviously we’d bring guys back. But where we’re at right now, we just decided that we have so many billets and trying to keep guys busy, the safest way was to shut it down right now.”

While a large number of players are from Moose Jaw, several members of the team come from out of town to be billeted and play with the Warriors. 

It’s been since late November when the Warriors last played. Since the shutdown of games from the province, the Warriors had kept busy with practicing and working out in smaller groups.

The Warriors were 4-and-2 in the six regular-season games they were able to play, and looked to build on their season last year that saw them qualify for the 2020 league final, which was cancelled due to the pandemic.

“We’re all disappointed,” Weisgerber said. “I think they understood and they knew it was coming. It is what it is and it’s the world we live in right now. No one seems to be able to have any answers with it, so it makes it tough. We just decided with that and the schooling part, that it was the best time for guys to go home for school at the beginning of the semester, that it made sense in every direction that we do it now.”

If this is it for the Warriors, it ends the U18 careers of 13 players on their roster, including captain and leading scorer Atley Calvert, goaltenders Kael DePape and Jaxson Taupert, defencemen Ethan Peters, Max Wanner and Wyatt Wilson, and forwards Evan Callaghan, Riley Niven, Kirk Mullen, Tyson Kistner, Christopher Otterson and Hayden Wilm.