2024 presidents welcom

Hello Rams Community,

Please allow me to introduce myself, my name is Marc Cardinaland I am the newly elected President of your St. Albert Rams Lacrosse Club.  For those of you that I haven’t met before, I have been a coach in our Rams program since 2019 and most recently served as the Division Director for the U7 to U13 divisions.  With the announcement of the opening of Registration for the 2025 season on December 1st, I wanted to send out an update on some exciting news about our club but would be remiss if I didn’t first acknowledge the huge contributions from some of our past board members who’ve recently moved on from our Board.  Particularly our Past President and Equipment Director Adam Connelly, our past Development Director Trevor Graham, our Past Tournament and Volunteer Directror Becky Hobbs and our Past Discipline Director Bobby Harris.  Their tireless contribution to our Club has enhanced the experience for every player who pulled a Rams jersey over their head over the last number of years, and I cannot express our Club’s gratitude enough.  Thank-You!

Our Club has some exciting news to share about the coming season.  For those that aren’t yet aware, we have unveiled a new logo and colour combination that we feel will honour the history and success of our Club while ushering in a modern look that will reflect the community pride, sportsmanship, teamwork and personal growth we strive to instill in every one of our athletes.  Although there is always some sadness when retiring our long-used Rams logo, we are extremely excited to see our players wear these new uniforms in competition. Shortly, we will be circulating some sponsorship opportunities with these new uniforms and will be looking for support from our community members to reduce the cost to each and every player.  

Having said that, like many minor sports organizations, we are seeing a huge increase to costs in running a successful and valuable sporting program and as such have made some changes to our registration process that may impact some families.  These decisions were not made lightly and came with a lot of thought but in the end, our Board feels confident that we have balanced financial impact to each family with a plan to deliver a quality and productive program.

Registration Fees

There has been a slight increase in each division’s registration fees for the coming season and this is to mitigate the rising cost of floor time and referee fees.  Despite these costs, you will see through the registration process that EACH Rams player from U9 to U17 will receive a pair of game shorts for the coming season. (Please refer to the size chart while registering your player) We are also committed to keeping team fees at a minimum and as such we will continue to include all practice floor time costs as well as registration fees for our own Rams hosted tournament for the Divisions that can attend.  

Volunteer Commitments

Despite many families fulfilling their volunteer commitments in the past, we still have many unfilled volunteer positions that has cost the Club in either lost fundraising opportunity or by beingforced to pay 3rd parties to fulfill those positions.  As such, we have made the tough decision moving forward to collect a $200.00 deposit at the time of registration to cover any costs accrued with not fulfilling those commitments.  For any family that has multiple players we have capped the Volunteer commitment at a maximum of 2 per family.  We, as a Club, are committed to returning those fees back to each family upon the completion of your volunteer commitment but we do ask that you give us some time to confirm the fulfillment of that requirement.  Any questions can be sent via email to our Volunteer Director.

Mandatory Raffle

While completing the registration process you will also notice that there is a mandatory $50.00 prepaid raffle charge to each registrant.  Once we have completed team formation we will be distributing a raffle book with Five $10 raffles tickets to each player.  Once each family sells their book of tickets, they can keep the funds to offset the initial cost at the time of registration.  These funds will go a long way towards supporting your athlete through extra floor time, specialized development coaches/clinics and further training for our mandatory coach development.

Respect In Sport

In an effort to provide a safe and inclusive environment for our athletes and to cultivate a respectful attitude towards our ALRA certified referees, we are requiring one parent from each player to have completed and maintained an up-to-date Respect in Sport for Parents certificate number at the time of registration.  If you have any questions or concerns, please refer to their website at https://parent.respectgroupinc.com.  To learn how to obtain or transfer your current certificate to the Rams check out the GELC page here.

We as the St. Albert Rams Lacrosse Club sincerely appreciate the strong support and commitment each family and athlete has made to our program and our community.  We strive to deliver tremendous value for our players and are confident that we will achieve this again for the 2025 season.  Should you have any questions or concerns I welcome you to contact me directly via email at president@ramslacrosse.ca.

Kind Regards and Yours in Lacrosse,

Marc Cardinal

Rams President