The Okotoks Female Hockey Classic took on added meaning this year.
For members of the Okotoks U15 B Green Oilers, the annual three-day tournament was an opportunity to galvanize behind one of their own en route to capturing the gold medal.
“This is a pretty special Remembrance Day tournament for us,” said Okotoks U15 B Green head coach Wade Evans. “We really talked with the girls about it, having The Last Post yesterday where we all came out on the ice, it was a tough day for one of our players going through that.
“But that helped us gel and come together for a teammate.”
The Remembrance Day connection is through Oilers skater Avery Herbert whose uncle Nathan Hornburg, a corporal with the King’s Own Calgary Regiment, died in combat in Afghanistan in 2007.
The team wore wrist bands in Hornburg’s honour during the tournament.
“It was a difficult weekend for the family, but the girls all rallied around the opportunity to show their teammate support as well as honour his memory,” added Evans.
Once the puck dropped, Okotoks Green played like a team pulling together on the same rope.
Okotoks posted an 8-0 win over Wheatland, 1-0 triumph over Airdrie and a 2-0 loss to Vermillion in round-robin.
In the gold medal game on Nov. 12, Quinn Farrelly scored twice, Lexis Mannix-Gear, Violet Johnston and Aneka Watkins found the back of the net while Kahli Giesbrecht made 15 saves for her third shutout of the tournament in a 5-0 romp over the GHC Ignite.
“We started out the year and our goaltending has made things pretty good, Kahli has been amazing, right from a shutout in our first game which gave the girls the confidence,” Evans said. “We talked about needing to give her some help today (in the final) and we came out really strong.
“It’s her mental side, you can’t talk to her before the game, she’s just in the zone. Three shutouts in four games is pretty impressive.”
Coach Evans lauded the play of Mannix-Gear, a top scoring forward on the team, who played defence during the weekend and was a puck rushing ace and praised the full team effort.
“What we do in practices, we just did well on the ice in our games,” said Okotoks U15 B Green captain Morgan Lawrence. “We just kept going, didn’t stop and got where we wanted to be.
“It was good we won gold, and it was good to play with a bunch of girls that I’ve got super close with, super quickly.”
Just five games into the regular season, the Okotoks Female Hockey Classic was the first tournament of the season for the team and should be a valuable bonding experience, the coach added.
“Normally you need an away tournament with the girls at a hotel to start doing that,” Evans said. “But having success in our home tournament and we came into this (gold medal) game almost through a math equation.
“And then to come out in the final game and come together as we did, I think it will do great things for our team.”
The three-day tournament featured 50 teams in 11 divisions at five rinks with 14 Okotoks minor hockey squads and a pair of Rocky Mountain Raiders units.
“The biggest part about this weekend is celebrating female hockey in Okotoks and as a sport in general,” said Raiders U15 AA head coach Keegan Thompson. “You see the trend with female hockey becoming bigger, especially in western Canada, we have such a good program here.
“It’s a big celebration and you’re bringing some of the top teams from around the province to compete and just competing is the name of the game.”
The Raiders took home the U15 AA gold medal at the Classic, following a seesaw 5-3 victory over the Warman Wildcats out of Saskatchewan.
“We played a strong 60 minutes each game,” said Raiders forward Ella Simard, who leads the AFHL U15 AA league with 10 goals in eight games. “And we just kept going, it was a team effort for sure.
“It was fun playing different teams and seeing other people.”
Rocky Mountain posted wins over league rivals Airdrie and Southern Express as well as a 5-4 result over Warman in round-robin to get to the final.
Backstopping the team is a stellar tandem in goal featuring Teagan Shaddock and Abby Szilagyi.
“Each and every night you could look at them and know you’re going to get a different shade of red of brick wall,” Thompson said. “It’s been really good to have, when breakdowns happen in a game we can resort to those goalies making those big timely saves.”
The Raiders are off and running with the best record in the Alberta Female Hockey League (7-1).
Thompson said he couldn’t ask for a better group of girls to coach.
“It’s a coach’s dream, to have a group of girls that bond instantly, the play for one another, compete for one another and they love one another,” he said.
“With that power of positivity, we just think that when everyone is on the same page, we can get to our goals and move beyond our goals.”
Elsewhere, the Oilers also took home the gold medal in the U13 B and U9 divisions, both of which were all-Okotoks finals.
The Raiders finished with the silver medal in the U13 AA division at the Classic following a narrow 1-0 defeat to Airdrie, Okotoks took silver in U15 A in an overtime loss to GHC.
Okotoks Gold just missed out on a repeat championship in the U18 B division, taking silver to the Beaverlodge Blades. Okotoks also took silver in the U11 A division.
For more information on the Classic, visit omhatournaments.com.
