The Penticton Vees and fans celebrate the team's win after eliminating the West Kelowna Warriors from the playoffs May 4, 2022.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Tami Quan

Seventeen-year-olds don’t have a reputation for great judgement so when young hockey players are thrust into the spotlight they might not know how to handle it, which is why the Penticton Vees’ vice president said the team works hard to guide players on and off the ice.

Fraser Rogers is the vice president of the Vees and he said the franchise has always put an emphasis on educating young players about how to be respectful in their personal lives, but it’s going to be more important as the team heads into its first season in the Western Hockey League.

The ongoing sexual assault trial involving five players from the Canada's world junior hockey team, including two former Kelowna Rockets, has sparked a conversation about what young players learn in hockey locker rooms.

“We preach being good people,” he said. “They're teenagers. They're going to have their emotional moments... but for us, luckily, we haven't had any major problems here just because of that foundation.”

On top of seminars about how to use social media and interact with fans, players get training from the Canadian Red Cross about consent and sexual harassment.

“A local instructor does a bunch of consent, sexual harassment training for sports teams, and we do a lot of that every year,” he said. “It's eye-opening educational stuff when it's in a group setting and they have a chance to absorb it.”

Many of those seminars were facilitated by the league. Group discussions are helpful, but Rogers said it’s important to do more.

“There's follow-up with one-on-one discussions with coaches and captains at all times as well. We have 25 teenagers on this team... they're not saints, they're obviously great kids. But, here our only problems are minor.”

Rogers said they provide players with the resources, the counselling and the eduction they need because they don't want to see what happened with the world junior team get "repeated ever again."

READ MORE: WHL rivalry between Penticton and Kelowna starts before teams hit the ice

The sexual assault trial is a reminder to any sports team to make sure young athletes get this kind of guidance, he said.

The Vees have been working with players on how to conduct themselves for a long time. When a 15-year-old girl sent nude photos to some of the players on the Penticton Vees more than 10 years ago, players were promptly instructed to delete and report them.

"Those pictures were sent to a lot of people," general manager Fred Harbinson told iNFOnews.ca in 2014. "Lucky for us I had talked to our guys and we had a meeting about it. I said, 'Look. If somebody sends you something like that, you think it's funny. But you know what? Delete it. Just delete it.'"

Ensuring players have a positive effect on the community at large is a lot of what the Vees focus on, Rogers said, but now that the team is heading into the WHL, and the limelight is getting brighter, it’s important to make sure playing hockey has a positive effect on the players.

“It's tough for kids to go through the cyber bullying world, and the pressures of social media, and the expectations sometimes,” he said. “What we always reinforce as players is not to be hard on themselves, and give themselves grace, and don't get sucked into that world of feeling like you have to validate everyone's opinion about yourself online.”

The team’s coaches and staff are accessible to the players’ parents, but Fraser said they usually only talk about getting their kid more power play time rather than how hockey affects their personal lives.

Tons of kids dream of going to the NHL and moving to the WHL brings the Vees closer than they’ve ever been to that big league, Rogers said. It's a challenging position for young players since they have to think about their careers when they’re out and about being kids.

“It could be a Sunday and you're at Booster Juice with your teammates, you're still acting in a respectful manner, because even though the jersey's not on, we say you're always wearing that Penticton flag... you're always under a microscope in your community,” he said.

"We are going to be the story all season long next year as the new team on the block.”

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