The following individuals have been nominated to the Steering Committee for elected positions. They met the May 15, 2024 deadline of nomination acceptance and submittal of a candidate statement. Their statements are reproduced below unedited and in their entirety. Refer to the Elections page for any questions.
(in alphabetical order)
A Bend resident for almost 25 years, Muna is a passionate hockey mom. Hockey was not a sport that she grew up with. She grew up playing softball and tennis at an early age. The love of hockey started the first time she watched her eldest son play when he was 5 years old. She has 2 boys and both love to play. She has been married to software engineer husband Chris for almost 28 years. After a career in cellular contract negotiation and then becoming a full time home engineer, she started a whole new career path 9 years ago as an esthetician, and loves what she does.
Since she couldn’t be a part of the game on the ice, she thought she would help grow the program from behind the scenes. At the end of the 2014-2015 hockey season, in preparation for our first full sheet of ice, Muna started her role as the Bend Rapids financial manager. Prior to her official position with the Bend Rapids, she had filled in and helped where needed with the Bend Polar Bears. Over the last few terms, as financial manager, she has watched the organization grow each year. With growth comes the need to be flexible and adjust to the progress. Muna prides herself on the ability to do just that. She enjoys team collaboration, logistics and how all the pieces fit together. By far, her most favorite thing is watching a good Hockey game, even if her favorite players aren’t playing.
Muna Mackey
Thank you for the opportunity to express my interest in serving as the Finance Manager for the Rapids. My family and I have lived in Bend for nine years, and I’ve had the pleasure of watching my kids grow up at the Pavilion, where they began skating lessons during its opening year. Our son Owen, age 9, played with the 10U team last season, and our daughter Amelia, age 11, is a dedicated figure skater with the Bend Ice Figure Skating Club. As the only non-skater in the family, I seek opportunities to support these programs in ways that don’t involve wearing ice skates.
I am excited about the prospect of serving as Finance Manager for the Rapids, as it aligns my professional expertise with my passion for advocating for my kids—and yours. Through this program, I’ve witnessed my own children grow as athletes, friends, and teammates: Owen through hockey and Amelia through co-founding the “Siblings-of-Hockey” support group, ensuring everyone has fun during tournament weekends.
In my career as a civil engineer, I manage the design of public infrastructure projects, overseeing multimillion-dollar contracts, forecasting spending, and collaborating with diverse teams to keep projects and budgets on track. I am eager to bring this experience to the Bend Rapids organization, ensuring timely accounting of program fees and working alongside the Bend Ice Treasurer to maintain transparency for our families. My goal is to make this program accessible and successful for all our families by finding creative solutions to support both the program and individual achievements.
The Rapids organization has provided a community where our kids can form lasting friendships, work hard, and find success. I am committed to collaborating with the executive committee, steering committee, and families of our athletes to ensure our kids continue to thrive with this organization.
Thank you, Jessie
First of all I would like to start by saying thank you for electing me as the Vice Chair for the last two years. I was grateful to be elected in 2022, and find myself surprised at how fast the last two years have gone by. As a member of the Board, and a head coach this previous season, I have met a lot of great families in the Rapids. And I think that is one thing that makes the Rapids a little more special than other organizations I have been involved with. Each year, teams are brought together so that the kids can play hockey. But it's on the sidelines that family friendships are built, and these often last much longer than the season. Groups end up having house parties when they aren’t traveling, or a couple families who previously didn’t even know each other start a tradition of going camping together over the summer. To me, this is just as important as getting the kids on the ice. The memories created on and off the ice are what make all the extra hours worth it.
For the remained of my candidate statement, I want to fill you in on a couple of the bigger items I have worked on during the last two years, and would like to continue to work during the next two years if re-elected.
Partnerships with Oregon Ducks hockey
In Early 2023, when the Ducks came to town and played against Idaho and Utah, I introduced myself to the then head coach of the Oregon Ducks, Kyler Moore. Seeing the value in the Rapids having a partnership with any higher level hockey program, I stayed in contact with Kyler during the spring until he stepped down as the Ducks coach at the end of the season. Kyler, agreeing that a Ducks/Rapid partnership would be beneficial for both programs, passed my name along to the new coach, Jackson “Jack” Hyman. Since the fall of 2023 I have had multiple conversations with Jack as he committed to the ongoing partnership with the Rapids.
Through my conversations with Jack during the previous months I helped him with logistics when they came to Bend again in 2024 to play Washington. In exchange, Jack and his team were gracious enough to include Rapids kids in events before and during the Saturday night game, along with donating two autographed Ducks Jerseys which we raffled off during our home tournaments. One of our 10U teams, along with some of our 8U kids, were there for the Saturday night game. The kids were able to line up for a high-five line, and the 10’s played a “mini” full ice game vs Klamath Falls in-between the first and second period. This was a great experience for those kids. I am confident that it was the success of this weekend that brought some of the Ducks back for a hockey camp during spring break.
Based on the success of this partnership Jack and I have already been talking about plans for next year when they come back to play in Bend. If reelected, I am confident we will make next year an even bigger success than this year was!
Partnerships with local hotels
During the last year I created partnerships between the Rapids and seven local hotels that allowed us to change our home tournaments into a “Stay to Play” model. For those of you who may not be familiar, stay to play tournaments require that visiting teams must stay at one of our partner hotels in-order to participate in the tournament. They are an opportunity for hosting organizations to make a little extra money during the tournament . In order for this to function, I worked with the hotels to reserve room blocks for visiting teams at discounted rates, and in return, participating hotels that received business during the tournaments would make a donation to the Rapids based on the number of rooms rented. This partnership helps visiting teams find local hotels with discounted rates, and generates addition income for the Rapids. This program will bring in several thousand dollars of additional income to the Rapids each year.
Although I feel that our initial year of making our tournaments Stay to Play was successful, I am confident we can do better. If reelected I will look at additional hotels to partner with. In addition, I will look to see how we can encourage visiting teams during our regular season to utilize the hotels we have partnered with. This will potentially add a few thousand additional dollars coming back to the Rapids.
Growth, off ice training, and preseason training options
As we move forward over the next two years I would like to see the Rapids continue to bring new families into travel hockey from around Central Oregon. I believe we can do this by continuing to spread the name of the Bend Rapids out to the entire Central Oregon community through word of mouth, advertising, social media, engagement with local businesses, and our partnership with the Oregon Ducks hockey.
In preparation for both new and returning players, our organization must provide the best learning environments on, and off the ice. One of the ways I think we can expedite the development of all our players is to provide more opportunities for kids to practice important skills off the ice. Because our ice time is so limited and costly, I think we should find other locations to practice off the ice. For instance, last year as a head coach I had off ice practices utilizing a couple open tennis courts where we worked on passing, shooting, and positioning. Because we weren’t using expensive ice time, we could take the time to talk about techniques and strategies. I was able to talk to the kids about topics like how to making a smooth on-ice pass with power and accuracy. I wasn’t hampered by working on a small corner of ice, in a loud rink where I had to maintain everyones focus and yell just to be heard. Too often coaches feel like they have keep kids moving on the ice the entire practice because the amount of ice we have is so limited they feel like they are wasting time by just talking.
If the Rapids could also adopt this idea for utilizing off ice surfaces during both the preseason and mid-season, perhaps we can help close the gap that we experience every year when we start playing our first few games against teams that have already been practicing for weeks or even months ahead of us.
In conclusion, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my candidate statement. It is my hope that you have found me an approachable and effective Vice Chair during the last two years. Additionally, I hope that you see value in the projects that I have worked on, and the one I would like to begin in the future. If you should have any questions feel free to reach out to me at my Rapids email listed below. Have a great summer, and see you at the rink!
Todd Rich, vicechair@bendrapidsyouthhockey.org
I am thrilled by the possibility of contributing to the Bend Rapids as Vice Chair. I believe that hockey is a sport athletes can develop not only as a player but also cultivate lifelong character.
I am passionate about retention and ensuring all who enter the Bend Rapids program feel a place of belonging. If elected, I aim to prioritize that athletes and parents enjoy their experience so much they are eager to return for the following season. I envision working towards this with the board to establish overt expectations, roles, and agreements that are transparent to all. We want the players to feel welcome as they enter the program and challenge their skills throughout their careers.
Like all youth sports, a well-run program requires collaboration from athletes, parents, and the league. I would want to work with you all to learn about your experience to ensure that Bend Rapids is creating top-tier players and is Oregon's premier hockey program.
Adam Steele