Female Storm win provincial gold
By Mario Prusina Times Editor
Photo Courtesy of Sherry McMurray
The girls finished the round robin with an impressive 3-1 record in the round robin before sweeping the playoff round on the final day.
“I don’t remember being nervous … we were so into the games it was just pretty exciting,” said head coach Clay Armstrong. “We actually said at the semifinal game, whatever happens in the final, they will remember that overtime win in semifinals, and now I think they’ve all forgot about that because we then won the gold medal in overtime as well, which was wild. When we scored, the bench erupted, there were gloves, sticks, neck guards all over the ice. It was like winning the Stanley Cup, it was fantastic. Parents, coaches, players – we had a very close-knit group this year.
“We got beat out of our league playoffs and the team that beat us out and the team that won our Tier 1 banner were both at provincials and we beat both of them. So, we came together at the right time of the year to end up being the best Midget A girls’ hockey team in Alberta that day, which was pretty wild.”
The team – which features players from Strathmore, Standard, Rockyford, Hussar and Siksika – won with a solid defensive game and clutch goals.
The girls opened the tournament with a 4-1 win over Okotoks on March 14, before eking out a 2-1 win over the Calgary Jr. Inferno the following day.
The Storm went on to win 2-0 over Olds on March 16, before falling 3-1 to the host Irma later that day to close out the round robin.
Armed with the first seed going into the semifinal versus the fourth seed Inferno, the Storm scored a 2-1 overtime win to earn a berth in the gold medal game.
In the provincial game, the Storm was looking for revenge against Irma, but the host team jumped out to a 2-1 first period lead. The teams exchanged goals in the second period before the Storm tied the game in the third period, setting up another overtime thriller.
Late in the extra session, Ashlyn Riley converted a feed from Ainsley Olson to claim the 2019 provincial championship.
“The most exciting moment I had was the overtime win for the gold medal, that’s obvious,” said Armstrong. “As a coach, the coolest moment was Game 3 in the round robin – our dressing room gelled, and I put that directly on the leadership of the players that were involved. It’s something that you don’t always get to see as a coach but when you see it, it’s a pretty neat thing when they come in their own and the leaders step up and the players start buying into it, so that was fantastic.”
Besides the obvious of winning the gold medal, another highlight for the team was meeting former Calgary Flames head coach Darryl Sutter and having a picture taken with him and his Stanley Cup rings he earned as a coach of the Los Angeles Kings.
“The success was everyone working towards a common goal,” said Armstrong. “There was no one person that turned the table to make it happen – it was 100 per cent a team effort. And in that I include the parent group because the support we had was fantastic. We had a great group of parents, great group of coaches and a fantastic group of players.”