The annual Canal Flats Jill and Jock hockey tournament took place over the weekend, with four women’s and four men’s teams taking part.

Each year the tournament helps raise funds for a variety of causes through a silent auction, and this year funds from the auction went to assist the Sagar-Massie family, whose daughter Zoey is in need of surgery due to a birth defect known as Jeune’s Syndrome.

Zoey is currently on oxygen and needs to have a rib expansion surgery that is unable to be performed in Cranbrook, and as such Zoey’s parents have been forced to make multiple trips to Calgary.

Tournament participant Valerie Traverse says she had heard about Zoey as she has been a school bus driver in Canal Flats for 25 years, and Zoey’s father was a former student who would take her bus.

“They’re a young couple, and I know things are difficult for them,” Traverse said. “I know this little baby is very precious, and we just always need to help people.”

The family has recently moved from Canal Flats to Cranbrook to be closer to the hospital there.