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R. I. Reds Heritage Society to Help Sponsor RIIL Hockey Championships

Providence, RI (3/6/2013): The Rhode Island Reds Heritage Society announced today that its 725-member non-profit organization has become a major sponsor of the R. I. Interscholastic League’s (RIIL) 2013 hockey championship playoffs, to be held statewide this month.

The society’s sponsorship will be highlighted by a RIIL hockey playoff breakfast and news conference at the Crowne Plaza in Warwick, RI, on Wednesday, March 13, at 9:00 AM. The organization’s sponsorship funds will also provide assistance in supporting expenses for this breakfast and the playoffs.

Tom Mezzanotte, Executive Director of the RIIL said, “The RI Interscholastic League is honored to have the Rhode Island Reds Heritage Society as a sponsor for the 2013 Boys and Girls Hockey Championships. We are very fortunate to have the Rhode Island Reds Heritage Society to bring the history and traditions of the past to the players of today and tomorrow.”

Rick Scherza, a member of the Reds board of directors and the society’s principal liaison to RIIL, said, “The opportunity to help both the league’s high school boys’ and girls’ hockey programs has become an important focus for us the past two seasons.”

Mezzanotte added, “In both 2011 and 2012 the Reds society sponsored the first-ever RIIL “Unsung Heroes” awards and will do so again for a third time during the championship finals to be played at Brown University’s Meehan Auditorium March 16.”

This year the RIIL’s hockey program includes 32 high school teams for boys, spread among 6 divisions. In the girls’ league there are 10 teams in its 2 divisions. Buster Clegg, president of the Reds organization, praised high school hockey and its goals, saying, “Besides developing really good players who are devoted to the sport, high school hockey fosters values of team play, sportsmanship and discipline – all important lessons in life.”

Now in its 13th year, the R. I. Reds Heritage Society was formed in 2000 to restore and preserve the 51-year professional hockey history (1926-1977) of the Rhode Island Reds that began in the Canadian-American Hockey League in 1926 and ultimately became the American Hockey League in 1937 – a league that still exists today represented locally by the Providence Bruins.

For further information call 401-230-5905 or e-mail RIREDS15@gmail.com.

R. I. Reds Heritage Society
PO Box 504 Lincoln, RI 02895
Telephone: 401-230-5905
email: RIREDS15@gmail.com