WOMEN-IN-HOCKEY Digest 79

Topics covered in this issue include:

  1) Brampton Report
	by email@hidden (wistvani)

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Date: Sun, 23 Apr 95 19:37:57 CDT
From: email@hidden (wistvani)
To: email@hidden
Subject: Brampton Report
Message-ID: 

I've been back from Brampton for just under a week now, as a matter of
fact at this time last week I was on the road between Brampton and
Chicago.

I can't report on the whole tournament by any means but I can give my
impressions (as a first time skater at Brampton) and the results that
I remember from the level I played at.

For those of you who haven't heard of the Brampton tournament, it's an
annual womens/girls tournament now in its 28th year.  This year there
were 302 teams from Cananda and the US.

I play for the Chicago Ice, an adult women's hockey group.  I say
group because we really have two teams, both playing in a newly formed
league comprised of teams from Illinois and Southern Wisconsin.  One
team plays in the C level league (that's the one I play on) and the
other plays in the B level league.  For Brampton we combined teams to
get enought skaters and played D competitive.  It might seem strange
that we played at a lower level, but it seems (to us at least) that
the abilities at the different levels vary greatly depending on where
you are located.

Anyway, last year our team had only mustered 7 skaters plus a goalie
to go to the tournament, this year we were much better equipped with
14 skaters plus our goalie.  However, for most of the games we only
had 13 skaters, since one women was up there with her daughter's team
and only skated one game with us.

After learning early in the week that our first game was at 3:10 PM
Friday, hours before we had intended to arrive, and shifting our
travel plans to make it in time, we were ready to play hockey.  Much
to our amazement, we actually won our first game 3-0.  But since we
got all of the goals in the first period we only got 4 out of the 5
possible points.  (They award 1 point per period won and 2 for a game
win, with half of either of those being awarded in a tie.)

After some good food and a good nights rest we were ready to hit the
ice again.  This battle was tougher but we still came up on top,
scoring the only goal of the game with 15 seconds left to play.  Those
last 15 seconds were sure nerve wracking, especially when I got sent
out to take the face off right after the goal.  Thankfully, the face
of was recalled, and our number one center was rested enough to play
out the game.  So again we gained 4 points.

Now it was time to start doing the math, with one game left it was
looking pretty good for us getting into the finals, but we didn't want
to count on it.

Since we had a good chunk of hours between games we split up and
headed off to various area attactions.  Some women took in a Senior AA
game, which I heard was simply amazing.  A few others went to the Wild
Animal Park.  I joined the group which headed for the Hockey Hall of
Fame.  It was pretty inspiring, especially touching the Stanely Cup.
Hopefully soon women will be better represented there as well as on
the ice.

Now it was time for the final preliminary game, I was pretty nervous.
By now it was pretty apparent that the winner of this game was headed
to the finals and the loser to the consolation game.  Again we amazed
ourselves and pulled out a 6-3 victory, which did send us to the
championship game the next afternoon.  So now it was time to party. I
sure wish we could get that 7.3 beer down here, it was awesome.

To make a long story short, our dream ended in the final game, we lost
2-0 to the Brampton Canadettes.  But we did manage to keep them from
scoring on our open net after we pulled our goalie.  It was still an
awesome weekend as far as hockey was concerned.  We went home with
some pretty cool medals, and just being on the blue line for an awards
ceremony like that was something I'll remember for quite some time.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the names of all of the teams we
played, nor do I know how any of the other divisions turned out.  I
do know that the one other team from Chicago (The Rebels - our rivals)
in the other pool of our division went 1-2 in the preliminaries.  But
to give them some credit, they had a mostly (if not all) C team
playing since their B skaters were playing in DD.

Overall, it was a great weekend.  The hockey was most excellent, the
atmosphere was incredible.  It was so neat to see so many women and
girls in one place for the sole purpose of playing hockey.  The only
down real down points of the weekend were not directly related to
hockey, so I won't go into them here.

Wendy Istvanick
Wisconsin Women's Hockey - 1992-1994
Chicago Ice - 1994-1995

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End of WOMEN-IN-HOCKEY Digest 79
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