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AS the long winter nights of the Hockey Albury Wodonga season draws ever nearer, Wangaratta Dragons Hockey Club needs your help to keep the lights on.
After losing a major sponsor, the Dragons are left without a facility with lights to conduct training during the dark winter months.
While they can currently still host games at Cathedral College during the day, the lack of a location for midweek training has sent the club into top gear, eager to find a solution.
Their first plan is to install some temporary lights at the Cathedral College fields, but the Dragons will need to raise up to $20,000 to make this a reality.
Dragons' president Daniel Warner said the club set up a GoFundMe page and some other smaller fundraisers because they had all but ran out of options.
"Obviously with hockey being a winter sport, once daylight savings changes it's a little bit dark a little bit earlier in the evening to be running around without lights," he said.
"GoFundMe was basically the last option we had – we have spoken to Tim McCurdy last week and he was going to get together with the council and try to come up with a solution for this winter, somewhere we could train where there might already be lights.
"But we've got a fair bit of local knowledge and experience on our committee and we're running out of options for what we can do and where we can go."
The club will hold two sausage sizzles at Wangaratta Bunnings tomorrow and Sunday, March 5 in order to raise as much money as they can before it's too late.
Warner said he didn't know what would happen if the club can't raise enough funds.
"To be honest, I'm not quite sure and I don't want to think about it, but it's not good," he said.
"If we can't train, we're going to have to work out alternative training options and the club will suffer.
"People come to play hockey, and if we're not playing hockey and all we're doing is some alternative training somewhere else, it's not what people come to the club for."
To support the Wangaratta Dragons in their fundraising efforts, head down to Bunnings between 9am and 4pm on Saturday, February 18 – to give directly to their GoFundMe efforts, visit https://gofund.me/bf471065.





