Estevan hockey players Jenna Grube and Mariah McKersie were pushed to the limits at a provincial summer camp last week as the pair tried to earn themselves a Team Saskatchewan U18 jersey and play at nationals this fall.
Jenna, 16, and Mariah, 17, participated in the Saskatchewan Hockey Association (SHA) SaskFirst High Performance Program summer camp August 1 to 5 at Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Wilcox with 40 other top prospects in a bid to earn a spot on the 2015 U18 Female Team Sask roster.
If the girls make the cut, which should be known in about a week, they will first compete in a fall camp exhibition tournament in Regina against different Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) teams with the hope of being selected from that camp to participate with Team Sask at the Hockey Canada U18 Nationals in Huntsville, Ontario, November 4 to 8.
“If I made the team there would be lots of scouts (watching), so it would give me exposure,” said Mariah, a defenceman with the Notre Dame Hounds who failed to make the Team Sask cut last year. “I want to hopefully play...post-secondary hockey, like maybe in the CIS or NCAA. This would just give me good exposure.”
Mariah and Jenna started off the five-day camp with a team practice and fitness testing. Over the next four days the girls would participate in an on-ice practice, two to three off-ice training sessions and a game each day.
“The fitness testing was probably the hardest part, like the beat test,” said Mariah. “They set it up in the gym. There is a pylon on one side of the gym and then another one on the other side...they play a CD and it starts beeping and then once it beeps you run to the other side. It starts off slow. Then once you get to the other side it'll beep again and you have to run back to the beginning and you keep going back and forth. There are 12 different levels and each time the level goes up it just keeps getting faster and faster. It's kind of hard.”
Jenna, who will play centre for the Hounds this season, said the competition during the games was fierce. She said they were really low scoring despite the top calibre prospects at the camp, but the hockey was still played at a high pace.
“It was really competitive,” said Jenna. “Everyone was super aggressive out there because you're trying out for Team Saskatchewan so you have to want it.”
Mariah said the physical style of play in the games suited her just fine. She said her game is more focused on creating offensive chances and rushing the puck, but rough play is not something she shies away from.
“There were some pretty good girls out there,” she said. “I had an idea of what to expect because I've played against most of those girls before, but it was pretty good.”
This was the first Team Sask tryout for Jenna and she had some butterfies going in, but the former Weyburn Southern Range Gold Wings star said she worked hard off the ice this summer to prepare her for the camp and also got in a bit of on-ice practise.
“I think it went pretty well,” she said. “By the end of the week it got pretty tiring, but it was still lots of fun out there.”
