With no local elite minor hockey options, Lethbridge-area female hockey players head to Lloydminster – Lethbridge
Minor hockey is supposed to supply younger athletes with each alternative to develop and chase their desires on the ice, however a handful of 15-year-olds from the Lethbridge space have been pressured to look elsewhere to play on the highest stage.
Ava Caputo and Callie McCulloch — in addition to two others from the Lethbridge space — are enjoying this hockey season with the Lloydminster PWM Steelers; one in all simply six feminine U18 AAA groups in Alberta.
Caputo and McCulloch performed for the Lethbridge-based U15 AA Southern Specific final yr, however as they aged out to U18, it grew to become clear that their native choices have been extraordinarily restricted.
“We don’t have a AAA group right here, and now we don’t have a AA group, so actually I can’t play right here in any respect,” Caputo stated. “If I needed to play on the highest stage that I presumably may, then I needed to transfer.”
The AA group was pressured to fold on account of an absence of numbers, with these 4 gamers headed to Lloydminster and some extra selecting to go to the South Alberta Hockey Academy program in Drugs Hat.
Caputo stated she has seen too many former teammates give up hockey due to restricted choices.
“I’ve recognized, there was like 9 of them perhaps, that needed to give up hockey as a result of we didn’t have sufficient gamers to have a group right here,” Caputo stated.
For McCulloch, it’s been only one extra barrier that she’s needed to push by way of to chase her hockey desires after enjoying on boys groups all the best way as much as U15.
“You understand, it bought to that time the place the boys, the altering rooms and stuff like that, you may’t go in the identical room, so you would need to get thrown into one of many closets on the rink to go change,” she stated.
McCulloch’s mother and father stated they’ve watched their daughter combat to proceed pursuing her desires, one thing that wasn’t so tough for his or her two sons.
“The alternatives that hockey has supplied for our boys have been rather a lot simpler than the ladies’ path,” stated Kevin McCulloch. “She needed to play boys hockey simply to have groups accessible for her.
“With out there being a program on the stage that she desires to play at, she’s pressured to journey and transfer away from dwelling — and that sacrifice hasn’t been simple , to let her transfer away at 15.”
There are 17 U18 AAA boys groups in Alberta at the moment, together with one in Lethbridge.
“The boys have, in the event that they don’t make the very best stage that they’re making an attempt out for, there’s at all times one to fall again on,” Kevin McCulloch stated. “They will fall again, and so they’re at all times going to have the ability to play hockey, regionally.
“We don’t really feel that the ladies have that chance; as soon as they don’t make these groups, then it’s just about over for them.”
Terra McCulloch stated she has watched too a lot of her daughter’s former teammates give up hockey on account of an absence of close by choices; one thing that’s robust on gamers and fogeys alike.
“Simply the gap that the ladies needed to journey, a number of individuals aren’t prepared or capable of put within the time to get the ladies to the place they should go,” she stated. “As a result of it’s not native, it’s an enormous dedication.
“Perhaps if we may have an area program that would assist the upper stage of hockey that the ladies wish to play, perhaps extra women – in Lethbridge itself and the encircling space – may nonetheless pursue their hockey desires.”
Lethbridge Minor Hockey Affiliation normal supervisor Keith Hitchcock stated Lethbridge did have a U18 AAA feminine program till about 5 years in the past when Hockey Alberta decreased the league to 6 groups to make it extra aggressive.
“The numbers struggled, so they only felt that there wasn’t sustainable numbers for AAA,” Hitchcock stated. “In order that they gave us AA in U18 and U15, and principally we’ve turn into a feeder program for AAA.”
Hitchcock stated for the reason that AAA program was eradicated, elite gamers from the Lethbridge space haven’t caught round.
“They’re recruited closely by the higher-level applications, and that’s laborious to say no generally,” he stated.
“In the event that they wish to keep dwelling, we provide an excellent program for that — we run it as a AA program, however identical as AAA, we have now the dryland, we have now the additional ice and all the things like that, but when they’re that good a participant and so they can play AAA, they are going to.”
Hitchcock stated it was the right storm that led to Lethbridge’s U18 AA program folding this yr, however work is being carried out within the youthful age teams to feed right into a U18 program, hopefully as quickly as subsequent yr.
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