Nine Houston ringette girls are heading to Mission, B.C. to compete in the B.C. Winter Games in February.
The Houston girls, aged 12 to 14, and nine girls from Terrace make up the Zone Seven ringette team who will compete against seven other zone teams from across B.C.
Coach Jacque Dahl from Terrace says their team has a strong mix of players.
“We have some great skaters and good scorers, and two goalies - that’s a bonus,” she said.
“They’re all really hard working players, they all have good skating ability, and they have good ring control,” Coach Dahl said.
She said the interesting challenge is getting team strategies worked out, because they are joining together girls from two different teams.
“Each team has their own things that they learn as a team and strategies that they focus on, so we need to sort of combine and come together on some new strategies as a team,” she said.
The B.C. Winter Games, funded primarily by the Province of B.C. through the B.C. Games Society, happens every two years and includes a large variety of sports.
The teams stay in schools with other ringette players, which Dahl says adds a good social aspect to the Games.
“They get to integrate and hang out and meet the girls from other teams. It’s a lot of the players that they might be playing with on double AA teams, or if they tried out for a B.C. team, they’d see a lot of these same faces,” she said.
Dahl says the Games only allow players to compete one time per sport, so this is a one-time experience for these girls.
“It’s good competition, [we play] hard games, but it’s a ton of fun and it’s a great experience to have,” Dahl said.
For more information on the B.C. Winter Games, see bcgames.org.