Female Bantam AAA League

Hockey Alberta (HA) has approved the creation of a AAA Bantam Female Hockey League in Alberta. HA will not be running the league and is looking for interested associations to step forward and create and administer the league. At last summers HA annual general meeting there was a meeting of a few associations and it was agreed that the 2009-2010 would the be earliest possible start date.

The Alberta Major Bantam Female Hockey League would be a great opportunity for the higher skilled girls to play at a very competitive level and develop their skills as players and young ladies.

I would like to hear from our membership on the interest within GHC to enter into the league. We currently have 5 Bantam A teams and 5 Bantam B teams and if we were to place two or three teams into the AAA Bantam league the remaining teams would be moved into the A and B Midget divisions of the Rocky Mountain Female Hockey League. That is assuming Cochrane, Okotoks and Airdrie would have Bantam A and B teams available. Costs of playing on a team in the AAA league will be similar to our AAA Midget program in the AMMFHL which has a registration fee of $2600 plus additional team fees and fund raising that can amount to another $2000. Fees could be reduced if the number of games were reduced.

Some of the questions we will need to answer before we can determine if we should join include;

• How much travel would we want to undertake? Do we want our 13 - 14 year old daughters on the bus to Grande Prairie? Maybe two divisions one in the north and one in the south with very limited interlock would be an option.
  
  
• Do we have additional ice for the longer games and additional practices?
  
  
• Will the creation of a AAA league damage A hockey in the smaller communities? Drawing girls away from their local A teams will reduce the numbers and will they find replacements?

Please post your comments here or send your comments to my attention at don.ogrady@shaw.ca

Everyone had a fantastic time at our 3rd Annual Ice Breaker Social and Auction at Shanks

The Girls Hockey Calgary 3rd Annual Ice Breaker Social and Auction at Shanks was a record smashing success. Teams raised over $37,000 dollars to cover the costs of team events, jackets and tournaments. Based on all the fun and excitement everyone was having outbidding each other on all the fabulous items, the social aspect of the evening was also very successful. Kerri and Patty will be getting the cheques to the teams over the next few weeks. Special thanks to Moe Lambert & Bev Boehm along with their team of volunteers for making this another successful event!

Scotiabank Girls HockeyFest

Want to skate at the Saddledome and receive instruction from Cassie Campbell one of Canada`s premier Olympic gold medal winning hockey players.

Date: Sunday, December 7^th

Time: 11:00 am – 12:00 pm – 1^st Session Registration

12:00 – 3:00 pm – Novice and Atom Divisions

2:00 – 3:00 pm – 2^nd Session Registration

3:00 – 4:00 pm – Motivational Speech and Q&A with Cassie Campbell – All Participants

4:00 – 7:00pm – Peewee and Bantam Divisions

Location: Pengrowth Saddledome

Participants: Girls between the ages of 7 and 14 – Maximum 300 participants

Cost: FREE

For information and registration go to Scotiabank Girls HockeyFest

Atom 4 on 4 Festival

On Nov 8th eleven of our Atom girls participated in Atom 4-on-4 Festival held at the Village Square Leisure Centre. The aim of the Atom 4-on-4 Hockey Festival is to play hockey in its purist form, shinny style hockey to have fun and develop skills. Our girls played 3 cross-ice games and had lots of fun and received very colourful jerseys for their efforts.

Four GHC Grads lead Colgate University

Four Girls Hockey Calgary (GHC) grads lead Colgate University Raiders in Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Division 1 play. Co-Captains Erin Brown (GHC grad 2005) and Sam Hunt (GHC grad 2005) are joined by Nicole McDonald (GHC grad 2006) and Jacquie Colborne (GHC grad 2007). The four former GHC Bruins are playing key roles in the Raiders success this year. For more information on the Raiders and to follow the success of our Calgary girls click on www.gocolgateraiders.com.

Rules for a Successful Season

Coaches, as the season kicks off I thought I should take a moment and answer the most commonly asked question we receive from Coaches.

Q. How do I manage an all female dressing room?

A. Simply follow these rules;

1. Players should not be left unsupervised in the dressing room. At least two mothers should be present in the dressing room at all times.

2. Never have an adult alone with players in the dressing room. At least two adults should be present at all times.

3. Players should be dressed 15 minutes prior to the start of the game to allow the coaching staff time to prepare the team for the game. Both female and male coaching staff should be present for the pregame talk.

4. Players needing help with their skates should take them into the hall and get their parent to tie the skates.

5. Male Coaches or Fathers should not enter the dressing room until all players have changed into their equipment.

6. Players who arrive late should wait until after the coach’s talk and the team leaves for the ice before getting dressed.

7. After the game players should not begin changing until after the coaches have finished their post game chat and left the dressing room. Two mothers should be present in the dressing room when the players are changing.

Please make sure you communicate these rules to your coaching staff, parents and players.

Welcome

Welcome; As President of Girls Hockey Calgary (GHC) I have decided to start a blog to provide regular updates to our membership and provide the opportunity for comments on topics that impact GHC. This is my first posting and I plan to update the blog regularly throughout the 2008-2009 season.

The season began with lots of excitement evaluations and selection camps began in early Sept and our Midget AAA's had their first game on Sept 19th, the remaining teams started their season in Oct. We continue to be the largest association in Western Canada with Six hundred and fifteen athletes playing on 37 teams.

This year we kicked off an exciting new initiative. The Rocky Mountain Female Hockey League was created to provide teams in Calgary and surrounding communities an opportunity to compete in larger divisions. We have 5 teams from Calgary participating in the Atom division, 4 teams in the Peewee B division and 3 teams in the Peewee A division. As you can imagine the creation of a new league with teams from five cities comes with a number of challenges and I appreciate everyone's support and patience as we take this significant step to growing female hockey in Southern Alberta.

This year also brought about some significant changes at Hockey Calgary that impacted the start of hockey for all associations throughout Calgary. Hockey Calgary converted from a manual scheduling process to a new computer software. As with most new software program it had its share of bugs which unfortunately caused significant delays in releasing the seeding round schedules to associations and central zone. The association and central zone were all then challenged to schedule practices and referees for the first weekend of play. With many a late night and hard work by the volunteers at Hockey Calgary I believe they have moved past these initial problems and we will see a much smoother scheduling of the second half.

Stay tuned for my next post.