Junior female team ready for 2008 Arctic Winter Games

After six weeks of preparation the Yukon's Arctic Winter Games (AWG) junior female hockey team is ready to hit the ice today for its first competition at the event.

After six weeks of preparation the Yukon’s Arctic Winter Games (AWG) junior female hockey team is ready to hit the ice today for its first competition at the event.

The team will play a total of two games today, which began this morning against Nunavut at 11 a.m. and will conclude later tonight with a game against a squad from the Northwest Territories.

“I think they have come together really well,“ said the team’s co-coach Cheryl Rivest, on Friday during a team outing at Pizza Hut.

“It is nice to see the older ones encouraging the younger ones to improve and showing them the plays and stuff.

They all are a really good bunch of girls, I don’t foresee absolutely any problems, and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.

We plan on going and really cheering on Team Yukon in all of the other sports as well, so we really want the girls to get a good view to not just the hockey, but the other sports that are at Arctic Winter Games as well and just make it a really fun week.“

The junior female team was selected back in January and since then they have been holding on-ice practices once a week.

The majority of the girls on the team are also involved in the Whitehorse Minor Hockey League, playing on teams in the PeeWee, Bantam and Midget divisions.

Some of the girls even organized their own dry-land training program and went to the gym as early as 6:30 in the morning on more than a couple of occasions.

In total there are 17 players on the team, which is the maximum number allowed for participating hockey clubs at the AWG.

This year’s group has three girls from Dawson City and one from Teslin, while the rest are from Whitehorse.

Some of the areas the group has been working on in practice include staying positive, improved communication out on the ice and the basics.

The basics are things such as taking short shifts, skating hard and looking up when controling the puck.

Additionally, the Yukon group has seen game action from senior women’s hockey teams in the Learn to Play program, which runs games every Wednesday.

A trip to Haines Junction earlier in the year also provided the team with valuable game experience.

The trip to Haines Junction was particularly special because it involved the Yukon AWG girls playing in a jamboree tournament both as individuals and then as a collective team, which played against a select group of players from the tournament.

Between the contests against the senior women’s teams in Whitehorse and the jamboree in Haines Junction, the Yukon girls have played a total of five games. The team went undefeated in all five contests.

The Yukon junior female group will compete in a pool of five teams, which includes Alberta, Alaska, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

A round robin format will be used and the top four teams will qualify for the medal round. The first place team will play the fourth and the squad that finishes second will play whoever comes in third. 

Heading into this year’s AWG, the junior female squad won’t have quite as much experience as the previous team did in 2006.

Out of the 17 players competing at the Games, there are only five girls who are returning from the last Arctic’s event.

In 2006, the team finished in fourth place at the AWG.

Despite this lack of experience, Rivest said she is confident in the team’s ability and is pleased with the progression they have made since January.

“They are improving, but the downside that you always get with Arctic Winter Games is trying to get everybody together at the same time,“ she said.

“So that has probably been the toughest thing, is just getting everybody together.“

She said playing actual games has helped with the team’s overall improvement.

“Hockey is a game,“ Rivest said. “You can practice until you are blue in the face, as far as I think anyways (but) you have to play a game to actually know how to play the game.“

Rivest said the team’s opening game against the Nunavut could be critical for achieving their goal of making it into the medal round.

“It is hugely important as far as standings because our first game is against Nunavut and they struggle I think with a lot of the things that we probably do, where their players come from a lot of different places,“ she said.

“They may have had a couple of opportunities to play together as well, so it is probably our best competition.

If we beat them, then we have a relatively good chance of playing in a semi final position on Thursday and by then we will have a couple of more games under our belt.“

Emilie Nugent, 15, has been playing hockey for 11 years now and this will be her second time playing on the junior female team at the AWG.

She said her main goals don’t necessarily involve medalling at the event.

“We had a really strong team last Arctic’s and now we have younger girls,“ she said.

“I just want to be a good role model for them. I don’t necessarily want to get the gold, but I just want to be a good role model for them and let them have a really good time. That’s my top goal is to have a good time.“ 

She is impressed with how much the team has improved.

“At the beginning we were all scrambling and we didn’t know what we were doing, but it’s getting better. Every day you can see it,“ Nugent said.

“I think every game will make it even better. I think that we will just keep getting stronger and stronger.“

Nugent, who plays defence, said it is great playing for the Yukon.

“I really like it because here we bond so much together and because it is a smaller town we know the girls personally,“ she said.

“I am just really proud to say I’m from the Yukon. We have the youngest girls, but it doesn’t faze us.“