Prince George ringette players on 2023 Canada Games radar

Amara Vaillancourt and Avery Bjorn remember what it was like to be spectators watching ringette in the 2015 Canada Winter Games.

They had a lot of fun at the arena known then as the Prince George Coliseum while they sat in packed bleachers with hundreds of loud cheering ringette fans from across the country who came to watch the tournament and saw Manitoba pull off an upset win over Ontario in the gold-medal game.

“It was pretty fun to watch,” said Vaillancourt.

“I remember we came to watch some games, for sure,” said Bjorn. “We were collecting pins from the different teams and everything, it was definitely fun.”

Vaillancourt and Bjorn were only eight years old at the time and they were already good friends with each other, just starting to find their way in the Prince George Ringette Association. Flash-forward to 2022 and they can’t help but think about the possibility they could be skating for Team B.C. a year from now at the Canada Winter Games in Prince Edward Island, Feb. 18-March 6, 2023.

Vaillancourt, a defenceman, and Bjorn, a forward, made the cut for the 17-player provincial under-16 roster this season and will be eligible to return to the team next year. This year’s U-16 squad also includes three Prince George players listed as alternates for the team - forwards Jocelyn Atkinson and Abigail McLeod and defenceman Addison Paulson.

Centre Emma Watson of Prince George was selected for the provincial U-19 team as the only northern B.C. based player on the team. Because there is no U-19 team in the northern zone, Watson and Taylor McGillivray of Quesnel play and practice with the North Okanagan zone team in Vernon.

The U-16 and U-19 provincial teams will represent B.C. at the Canadian double-A championships in Calgary, April 3-9. The national tournament is back on the event calendar after being cancelled the past two years due to health restrictions related to the pandemic.

“It’s going to be fun,” said Bjorn. “It’s going to be a big week and it’s going to be worth it. I think we’ll do good.”

Team BC had expected to play other Western Canadian provinces at tournaments in Edmonton before Christmas and in Calgary in early January but those events were scrapped. The team will gather in Spruce Grove, Alta, for a tournament Feb. 18-20, with Atkinson expected to slot into the BC lineup to replace an injured player.

“We haven’t had any tournaments yet but we do get together once a month and practice for the weekend and we’ve has a few games against U-19 zone teams in Vancouver,” said Vaillancourt. “We’ve played the Team BC U-19 team a couple times, in Kelowna and Salmon Arm. They were pretty close games, like 4-1 or 4-2.

“We all connected really easily. It’s just a really good group of girls coming We’re a fast team and we can pass. Right from the very start we’ve worked well together.”

Bjorn started playing ringette when she was five and playing for Team BC has given her the chance to develop alongside her age-group peers.

“I really like it because everyone has the same competitive mindset and everyone wants to be there and really compete at a high level, and it’s really fun to do that,” said Bjorn.

Bjorn’s mom, Jen Wheeler, a former player in Ontario, got her interested in the sport and her classmate, Vaillancourt, soon followed suit. Friends since kindergarten, they both attend Grade 10 classes at Duchess Park Secondary School.

Wheeler is now an assistant coach with the U-16 provincial team. She’s seen the abundance of talent the team has to work with and despite not having played the other the teams they will be facing, she figures Team BC will make some noise at the national tournament.

“They’re just a fabulous bunch of individuals, first of all, and like Amara says, they just really gel  together and they’re just a pleasure to coach,” said Wheeler. “As a coaching team, we look forward to being with them every training weekend that we have. They all have a coachable demeanour to them and they’re all really keen to learn, and they really encourage each other. There aren’t any team dynamics, like often happens, and we all feel pretty privileged to be there. They really lift each other up.”
The five U-16 provincial team members play together on the Northern Lights zone team, and they were in action Saturday in an exhibition game against the Prince George Rush U-19s at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena. Games of any kind have been in short supply the past five months for local ringette teams, with all zone and regional tournaments cancelled due to pandemic health restrictions. The Northern Lights and Rush would have been part of the Joy Hoffman Memorial tournament in November but it was a COVID casualty, just as it was in 2021.

All the Prince George-based provincial team players are part of BC Ringette’s Excellence Program, which started with off-ice and on-ice fitness assessments in June. The program provides continuity for players, no matter what part of the province they live in, so they each receive equal opportunities for training, with participating players required to meet certain fitness standards. The Excellence program, still in its inaugural season, gives players and coaches access to resources and personnel who offer seminars in all zones of the province. Eleven players from Prince George and Quesnel are in the program, more than any one region in the province.

“The Excellence program feeds the high-performance program, and from that you can be eligible for Team BC and you could also be eligible as a Canada Games athlete, but you have to be part of the Excellence program to choose that pathway to pursue the high performance,” said Wheeler. “It’s coaches and athletes from all over the province so it really helps establish a systematic method of play so that BC can compete at a higher level.”

Now that the province has given the green light for tournament play to resume, the Northern Lights U16s are gearing up for the provincial championships in Coquitlam, March 4-6. Also on the event horizon for Prince George teams is the provincial club championships, March 11-13 in Kelowna. The provincial team will have a five-day training camp in March in Salmon Arm to get ready for the national tournament.