The Cochrane Generals Jr. B main camp will be held on the last long weekend of the summer, it was announced late last week.

Prospective players for the club will be hitting the ice of the Cochrane Arena on Aug. 30 to Sept. 1. The team will be broken into two pools of players and practice Aug. 30 before playing games on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1.

Details are currently being finalized for potentially four exhibition games before the Heritage Junior Hockey League season opens Sept. 20. The team hopes to have a pair of home-and-home series and one of them has been finalized. The Gens will be home against the High River Flyers on Sept. 14.

Gens new head coach Kurtis Jones.

New head coach Kurtis Jones is looking forward to returning to coaching after taking a two-year hiatus. He got his start in coaching in Cochrane many years ago and is no stranger to the local hockey scene. Among those he coached were the sons of Jim Robinson and Jim Gordon, the Gens president and vice-president.

"I'm really to be excited to be on board again. I took the last two years off from coaching to re-evaluate and look at what I had to do as a coach," says Jones.

He also has two sons in minor hockey and its part of the reason he took a break. The oldest will be playing for the AAA minor midget AC Avalanche this season, who have their home ice in Cochrane. The other will be in the bantam Airdrie Xtreme AAA program.

"It's always nice to coach in Cochrane. It was always great for me. People have been very respectful and have taken care of me while coaching there," says the Canmore resident.

Having a core of 16 returning players is good news for the club.

"With 16 returning guys we should have a pretty good team," says Jones. "I'd like to see us be one of the tougher teams. It all depends on how we're going to work. We hope to be the hardest working team on the ice, hopefully, in skills and systems."

He has spoken to a few of the players and plans to reach out to the rest in early August. In the meantime, the coaching staff and general manager had a meeting last week to lay the groundwork for the season.

Besides putting a good product on the ice he's keenly interested in involving the community with the club and to have a close connection with minor hockey and local businesses.

"If we don't have community support, we don't have a hockey team. I would like to work closer with minor hockey. I'd like to work with the businesses in town."

While the finishing touches need to be added, one new game feature will be "Junior Generals Games" on Sundays to connect with local minor hockey players.

"We haven't everything completely planned out with minor hockey but we'd like to get some young kids in there to hang around the Gens and see what it's like. They're going to be Generals one day, hopefully. Some of them are and some of them will move on, so we'd like to get them involved at a young age."