Okotoks ringette athletes stood tall for a round of rising success among the best in Alberta.
Marin Jones, Marley Hinge and Penny Pritchard and the Rise U16 A squad rose to the challenge all season bookended by a provincial silver medal and Zone 2 championship.
“Our season had a lot of ups and downs and it was hard to get there,” Pritchard said. “We put in a lot of time and lot of effort to get to those high intensity games.
“And when we finally did, it felt so rewarding, even though it didn’t always go our way. But with the banner game for Zone 2, that felt so good to finally win as a team.”
The Rise established themselves as one of the best teams in western Canada throughout the season with medals in all seven of its competitions.
Bow View, who the Rise had a seesaw rivalry with, took the provincial title in Red Deer and went on to dominate the Western Canadian finals.
“It was very hard, but I know the team could do it,” said Jones. “That’s as far as we got, we worked as a team and that teamwork is all that we could have done to make that happen, without eachother we wouldn’t have been able to get that far.”
Jones, one of the captains on the team as a first-year player in U16, had nothing but good things to say about her team.
“It was a very positive group,” she said. “And it was one of the most skillful and talented teams that I’ve been in for the past nine seasons that I’ve been playing.
“It was a really good environment to play in and I felt really comfortable with who I was with a lot of times on the ice and that was very comforting for me as a first year.”
At zones, the U16 A Rise avenged a loss last season to Airdrie to bring home the banner.
“We had a really good variety of different players, and they all had their strengths and weaknesses,” Hinge said. “When we were all together, we were just one really big unit and everyone did their part really well.”
Pritchard attributed the success at important times to placing an emphasis on focus, taking time to properly warm-up and debrief before games started.
“When we started the season, we set goals for ourselves and one of the goals was definitely to win the Zone 2 banner because half of the girls on the team lost it last year,” Hinge said. “It was really good for them to win it.”
All three athletes got their start in the sport through the Foothills Ringette Association, which offers programming up to the U14 level.
Jones and Pritchard are nine-year veterans in the sport while Hinge played five seasons with the FRA before switching gears to Indus and then to the Rise, a regional team in Strathmore that features athletes from areas surrounding Calgary.
“For the last two years, I’ve been on the Rise team which has really opened my ringette career up to so much more,” Pritchard said. “I’ve been able to meet so many more people and be introduced to so many new techniques.
“I’m really grateful to have this opportunity to branch out a bit more.”
Ringette success run in the Jones family.
Jones’ younger sister Everly Jones and the U14 A Rise team took the zone title as well in a three-game series victory over Airdrie and brought home provincial silver from Fort McMurray.
