Above photo: Tumbler Ridge U13 Girls team. Back row left to right: Katie Gelsi (Manager), Sheena Urness (Coach), Kevin Pittman (Coach), Dan Callaway (Head Coach), and Amy Heaton (Coach). Middle row: Tiegan Monical, Cierra VanRootselaar, Layla McAndrew, Aubrey Levesque, Quinn Campbell, Brynlee Pittman, Christina Walker, and Chloe Hendrickson. Front row: Mercedes Favelle, Maya Gebala, Ever Michie, Paige MacNeil, Abalyn Strang, Bronwynn Callaway and Ainsley McAndrew. Missing is Addison Sorell.
The Tumbler Ridge U13 female hockey team is hard at work, practicing for their first ever appearance at WickFest in Calgary.
WickFest is a all-female hockey festival that was started in 2010 by Canadian hockey icon Hayley Wickenheiser, envisioned as more than just a tournament, “focused on building not just the player, but the whole person, an event where girls from around the world form lasting friendships, build life-skills, and participate in an event that builds self-esteem, pride, and skill levels through activities, clinics, and workshops,” according to the WickFest website.
This is the first time that Tumbler Ridge has had an all-female hockey team in decades, perhaps ever.
“I’m really excited,” says Paige MacNeil, one of the players on the team. “I’m looking forward to playing in the tournament, but I’m also really wanting to meet Hayley Wickenheiser.”
While the team has played a few games against other teams, the goal is to make it to WickFest. “We have some other games, but not too often,” says player Maya Gabala.
Head coach Dan Callaway clarifies. “We’ve already played a game against the Northeast Predators [an all-female Tier 1 team]. That was our first game a few weekends ago. So it was a good tryout for us to get out and see how we did. We’ve just signed on to go play at the Beaverlodge tournament November 15–17. And then two weekends after that we go to Calgary for WickFest.”
How did Tumbler Ridge wind up with an all-female team? “Our Manager, Tim Walker, saw that WickFest was putting out invitations for all-female teams to come to the tournament in Calgary. He paid the initial sign-up fee, which got us going.”
But, of course, Tumbler Ridge doesn’t have enough players for an all-female U-13 team. So, says Callaway, the team pulled up four of the older players from the U11 team.
Still, the team was short one player: a goalie. “We we were able to get a goalie from Chetwynd to join the team,” says Callaway. “So it’s a lot of girls coming from different areas to make our first Tumbler Ridge all-female team.”
Callaway says this is the first time a Tumbler Ridge team has been in the tournament, and it might be the last. Next year, many of the players will be moving up to play with the U15 team, but right now, the focus is to get the team to this year’s WickFest.
Player Aubrey Levesque says that playing in Calgary will be one of the most epic events for the team. “We’ve travelled to Fort Nelson to play before, but Calgary will probably be a little more interesting.”
While many of the players have been playing together for years, this is the first time they’ve played on an all-female team, and have already been practicing the better part of two months in preparation for the tournament.
Callaway says the sponsors have gone all out for this, providing the team with new jerseys, matching track suits and laces. “And the girls get to travel from the hotel with their coaches in their own shuttle bus. Just our team with their coaches. To and from the games, which is going to be very exciting.”
And after WickFest is done? Callaway shrugs. “We have the ice booked for every Sunday till March. So we will see how all the girls feel after this tournament and we’ll see where it leads us.”
But there’s not a lot of options, as all female’ teams are not that easy to find in this corner of the world, other than the Northeast Predators, who travel around Western Canada playing.
And even if there were more teams around the region, there aren’t that many female hockey players in Tumbler Ridge.
The hope was to have a Midget Rep team this year, but that never came to fruition. “It’s always a struggle with numbers,” says Callaway. “If there was an all female league, would these girls do it? It’s possible, but at the same time, you probably have five or six boys that would not be able to play hockey because of it, because you wouldn’t have the numbers for it. That being said, we have stuff for these girls like WickFest now. Seeing the direction of women’s hockey is awesome. These girls can showcase their skills now because lots of women before them paved the way. It’s nice to see.”
He says the growth of the teams is also tied to the mines. “I coached the Atoms team in 2015 and we had eight kids,” he says. “We had to join with Chetwynd that year. At that time, the mines had closed, except for Peace River Coal. There wasn’t the same population base. We didn’t have younger families with girls this age. That has changed over this last few years, since the mines started again in 2016. It’s been a lot more younger people coming into town with kids this age. You can see it through every level of hockey in Tumbler Ridge. Even the referees. We just ran a course last Saturday that was, I think, almost full capacity, which is huge. That’s always been a struggle. We’ve had to bring refs in from out of town before, sometime even cancel games. So there’s a lot more interest. And it’s great to see that there’s a lot more people playing hockey now.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
