COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – The eleventh annual USA Hockey Disabled Festival will take place Thursday through Sunday (April 9-12) in Buffalo, New York. Featuring a record 71 teams and over 1,000 players, the event will be held nearby at Northtown Center in Amherst with additional games to be played at the Cornerstone Arena in Lockport.
The Festival encompasses all four disciplines of disabled hockey: deaf/hard of hearing, special hockey, sled hockey, and standing/amputee hockey. The event will feature youth and adult sled tournaments; special hockey games; a blind hockey game consisting of players from Canada and the United States; and a new warrior division for standing/amputee teams comprised of service members who have been injured or disabled during service.
The fifth Toyota-USA Hockey Sled Hockey National Championship will also take place during the Festival and include several members of the U.S. National Sled Hockey Team competing against one another as members of their respective club sled hockey teams. The championship comes just a few weeks prior to the U.S. National Sled Hockey Team taking part in the 2015 International Paralympic Committee Ice Sledge Hockey World Championships, which will take place April 26 to May 3, 2015, at HARBORCENTER in Buffalo, New York.
The largest disabled hockey event of its kind, the Disabled Festival continues to expand over the years. Last year, the event set records with 54 teams and over 500 players. The inaugural event in 2005 included 24 teams and nearly 300 players.
USA Hockey, in partnership with FASTHockey, will provide live streaming coverage of the 2015 USA Hockey Disabled Festival games taking place at Northtown Center, including the Toyota-USA Hockey Sled Hockey National Championship. Games will be offered on an individual pay-per-view basis. In addition, DVDs of individual games will be offered at USAHockey.FASTHockey.com.
Fans wishing to follow all the 2015 USA Hockey Disabled Festival action can do so online at Nationals.USAHockey.com and also via the new Toyota-USA Hockey National Championships app, available for Android and iOS devices. The Toyota-USA Hockey National Championships app is available in the Apple App Store and on Google Play.
NOTES: For a complete schedule of the 2015 USA Hockey Disabled Festival, click here … The mission of the Festival is to provide a fun and exciting weekend of hockey in a grand event as well as promote and grow disabled hockey throughout the country … The Festival, which takes part in different parts of the country each year, will take place in Detroit, Michigan, in 2016, and San Jose, California, in 2017 … The 2015 U.S. Deaflympic Ice Hockey Team earned the bronze medal at the 18th Winter Deaflympic Games, which were held March 28-April 4, 2015, in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia … The 2015 IPC Ice Sledge Hockey World Championships will take place April 26-May 3, 2015, at HARBORCENTER in Buffalo, New York. For schedule and ticket information, click here.
