Royals’ Festinger promoted to Director of Hockey Operations
Victoria, B.C.- A new season will bring a new title for Dara Festinger of the Victoria Royals.
Festinger has been promoted to Director of Hockey Operations, the team announced Thursday.
“It’s exciting,” Festinger said. “I really enjoy getting to be a part of so many parts of the organization. Just seeing all the different areas with Joey (Poljanowski, Vice President of Hockey Operations) and Jake (Heisinger, General Manager), what they do encompasses everything. It’s kind of unpredictable and different things come up, so it’s really interesting.”
Festinger’s new duties will include managing travel, day-to-day logistics, billing and administration, education management and support on the hockey side.
She’s one of the first women to hold the role in the WHL.
That list includes Portland’s Lisa Hollenbeck, who has since been promoted to Winterhawks Vice President of operations.
“Lisa is amazing,” Festinger added. “I call her my mentor- I don’t know if she loves that. Every time we’re in Portland, we always catch up and chat about things and she has given me tons of really good advice. Really supportive and amazing.”
“I wanted to get involved with the team and was kind of looking for a way that I could do something that they didn’t already have,” Festinger recalled. “I realized that they didn’t have anybody doing stats, so I reached out to Sven and got into it that way and then I just really enjoyed it. Sven was super supportive of anything I kind of wanted to track, anything I was interested in. We ended up getting a group of 10 volunteers together by my last year there that would come to the games and track a bunch of stats manually and he really supported it and was engaged with what we provided.”
With Victoria coming off a successful season that saw the club return to the playoffs with a crop of young, up-and-coming talent, Festinger is already looking forward to training camp and another season at the Save-On-Foods Memorial Arena.