First zones, then provincial, and at the end of March, the Lac La Biche Bantam Female Clippers went ahead and completed the trifecta. On Tuesday, March 26 at the Bonnyville Arena— the girls won the East Central Alberta Female Hockey League as they defeated the Lloydminster in a winner-take-all final game that ended 7-3.
Bradley Hutchinson is the Lac La Biche Minor Hockey Association's Director of Female Hockey. He's also the associate coach for the Bantam Female Clippers. Despite the team being short-benched and a couple of goals behind after the first period, the local girls fought well to claim the title, he says.
"We were down 3-1 after the first period. We really had only six girls and after the first period it wasn't looking good, but the girls came together, played really hard, pulled it off and won the game," he said.
The young and victorious Bantam squad was awarded the league champion banner just two days after they were awarded the Provincial title for their Bantam B Female division.
Throughout the Provincial tournament, the local Lac La Biche girls dominated, outscoring their opponents 63-15 in the six games they played — all resulting in wins. In the finals of the provincials played on Sunday,March 24, the Lac La Biche girls faced the Strathmore Storm and after a game that proved to be the toughest for the local girls, they came out on top 9-5, and came home provincial champs.
Zone win
The Bantam Girls qualified for the Provincials by winning Zone 2 beating a Lakeland team and two Lloydminster teams — to grab the zone banner. As their victory run showed, the team has little problem scoring goals. At the end of the regular season Clipper forward Berry Rosychuk had walked away with the overall scoring title, racking up 29 goals and 20 assists in 16 regular season games. Lac La Biche players were the top three point scorers in the league with Haley Carothers in second with 25 goals and 13 helpers in her 16 games and Jazbey Hrynyk in third with 21 goals and 14 assists in 15 games.
This is the first time Lac La Biche Minor Hockey has iced a Bantam Female team. It was a pretty good first season, said Hutchinson, giving the skaters full credit for their teamwork, patience and work ethic.
"It is the first time that we have ever had a Bantam female team in Lac La Biche. All the other years, we have had a Peewee female team a few years back that actually played in the boys league so, this year we have had success of having both a Bantam female team and a midget female team... They Played together as a team, Pierre Sparklingeyes was the head coach, he did everything with the team, he did a really good job...They played really hard, stayed together as a team and played their hearts out...I am very proud of them," said Hutchinson.
Making this season's win streak even more impressive is that the team has four skaters who are only peewee age, but have adjusted to the next level pressures.
Jim Nashim is a proud hockey dad. His daughter Kathleen scored 11 goals in 16 games with the team this year. Nashim said the team is a one-of-a-kind.
"Lac La Biche should be proud of such a great group of athletes that actually had four PeeWee aged girls added to be able to ice a great team this year," Nashim told the POST. "The young girls along with an arsenal of goal scorers were a recipe for one of the best represented teams to ever come from this area."
