A year from now, they're hoping Humboldt will be painted green.
In early May of 2012, Humboldt and area will play host to the RBC Cup, Canada's Junior A Hockey Championship.
Teams will descend on this community from all over the country, to play for that special cup, and they'll be bringing friends, family and fans with them.
To prepare for next year's event, members of Humboldt's RBC Cup organizing committee attended the 2011 RBC Cup in Camrose, Alberta last week.
Jodi Smith, head of special events and promotions for the Humboldt Cup, was one of those who went to Camrose.
"We got lots of ideas," she said of the Alberta event. "We just have to make them our own... put our own Humboldt spin on it," she smiled.
Humboldt was announced as the host city for the 2012 Cup last spring. In the past year, they have put out an initial ticket offering, had some large sponsors step forward, and set up their organizational structure, Smith noted.
In Camrose, they really got an idea of what they've already got covered and where there are gaps they still need to fill, Smith said.
"In talking to their host committee and Hockey Canada, we are set up very nicely," Smith noted. "Where we are right now is ahead of the game."
One of their first official acts of business in the last year before the event is to hold a kick-off barbecue in order to take getting ready for the RBC Cup from the committee level to the community level.
The Road to the 2012 RBC Cup Kick-Off barbecue is set for May 12 in Civic Park from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
They want to remind people that we are just a year away from the Cup, Smith said.
There will be a place for volunteers to sign up - they need about 300 - and T-shirts on sale, promoting the two themes developed for that week of hockey: "Saddle up to the RBC Cup," which is a nod to the Humboldt Broncos, and "The Road to the RBC Cup."
It's Smith's job to make sure the public gets as involved in this event as possible.
"Ultimately, we want to have this city painted green," she said. "We want everybody who comes in to town to know we are ready to put on a big show."
Nightly entertainment after the games is being planned as are other promotions in the community.
Local service groups and organizations will be contacted to see if they are interested in getting involved and reaping some rewards for their groups.
"We want everyone involved. We want everyone to benefit from the fact we're going to have thousands of people converging on us," Smith said.
As for visitors, Smith is hoping they will come in and feel welcome and at home, that they will be able to walk into any business in town and "know that they are being hosted by Humboldt."
This event is really going to play on the community's success with the run for Hockeyville in 2009, Smith noted.
"Hockeyville snagged a level of community enthusiasm, and we want to replicate that," she said. "The electricity, that everyone's excited."
They are planning things to keep the awareness of this event up in the community, and to get some hype going, Smith said.
A golf tournament is being planned for June 4, for one, she noted.
Head coach of the Humboldt Broncos, Dean Brockman, also went to Camrose to check out their event.
"It was really good. You could tell they were very well organized," he said.
Brockman had a couple of reasons he wanted to attend the Camrose cup. First, so he could go to a cup without working at it. When you're there with a team, he noted, you don't really have any perspective on what is going on. You are focused solely on winning.
"You could see it a bit more objectively," he said of going this time.
Second, he wanted to see if there were any changes to the format of the event that had changed since he attended the last time in 2009.
Brockman said he enjoyed the atmosphere in Camrose, in comparison to other centres like Victoria and Cornwall, Ontario, where they attended cups in 2008 and 2009. In those large centres, the Junior A championship was lost amidst everything else happening, he indicated. That was not the case in Camrose.
Brockman talked to some of the other coaches when he was in Camrose, picking their brains for tips for his team, and how to handle things like distractions during the week-long tournament at home.
He also gathered information on how the game has changed at the national level, and some of the other tidbits of information needed to successfully run a team through this tournament.
He also checked out some of the talent on the ice when he was there, trying to determine the level of play it will probably take to get to that point.
As for his own team, they are heavy into recruiting mode right now.
Some of the players he traded 20-year-olds for in January will be coming into the fold fairly quickly, he added.
"We're trying to get to where we need to be."
He's also been preparing for a longer than usual season next year - which will happen, no matter how the team does.
"It's been an education - knowing we're going to play in mid-May," he said, when other years they've gone game by game.
