A group of student athletes and parents made a last-ditch effort to save their beloved ice rink in Panorama City Monday after its owners announced the plan to shutter the rink for good. <\/p>\n
Families and coaches said they were notified that the LA Kings Valley Ice Center in Panorama City was sold, and the new owners will be closing its largest rink, putting a youth hockey program in jeopardy.<\/p>\n
Everly Corrington is among 200 players who are hoping to convince the new owners to keep the rink open. <\/p>\n
“(Hockey) has been my dream ever since I was 3,” Everly said. The 10-year-old is the captain of the team, California Heat, playing among boys.<\/p>\n
“Without our big\u00a0ice, then we can’t have a home\u00a0rink\u00a0here for our families, and that will essentially either mean we need to relocate or our club will be no longer,” said Kelly Stirzel, director of hockey for California Heat.<\/p>\n
Other than Panorama City, Burbank is the closest rink. And because there aren’t a lot of hockey rinks in the area, many of the student athletes will have to stop playing, Stirzel said.<\/p>\n
“This is a huge outlet for our community and huge outlet for our kids and our families to come together and be a part of something bigger than themselves,” he said, explaining losing the hockey program could change who the young players grow up to be. <\/p>\n
The LA Kings have a branding agreement with the rink. The hockey club is hoping to get some support from the professional team to help convince the owners not to close the rink.<\/p>\n
NBC Los Angeles reached out to the general manager of the rink for a statement on the closure but did not hear back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of student athletes and parents made a last-ditch effort to save their beloved ice rink in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49,25647],"class_list":{"0":"post-244623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-la","9":"tag-la-headlines","10":"tag-la-news","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","13":"tag-los-angeles-news","14":"tag-panorama-city"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}