By Hayley Wickenheiser /
The WWHL season is winding down. With a 24-game schedule, every game is key.
My club team, the Oval X-Treme has clinched first place, but the second place spot is still up for grabs between the Minnesota Whitecaps and the Strathmore Rockies.
Edmonton Chimos will finish fourth with the BC Breakers in last spot.
This season, the format has changed where every league game matters. There are no playoffs and the top two teams in the league after the 24-game schedule represent the WWHL at the ESSO Nationals in Charlottetown, PEL March 11 to 13. With only 5 teams in the league, this format makes the most sense to me.
The CWHL (Canadian Women’s Hockey League) based in the east, will send their top two teams to Nationals. A round robin format will determine the winner. This will represent the first true National Championship between the two leagues and while there is much work to do, it’s a step in the right direction.
On a recent road trip to Vancouver to play the BC Breakers at the University of British Columbia, Nancy Wilson, associate coach with UBC and assistant with the Women’s National Team, gave our team a tour of the new Olympic facility being built there.
While still being completed ahead of schedule, the arena will seat approximately 5000 spectators, looks to be state of the art in design and is attached to the two other rinks currently being used at UBC.
It will host preliminary men’s and women’s games at the Olympics in 2010 and will no doubt be full to capacity for them all. What a great legacy to leave future UBC hockey teams.
I also couldn’t help but think of what an ideal rink to host the WWHL’s BC Breakers. Post 2010 Olympics, the facility will remain, and I am sure the fan base and excitement generated from Olympic Women’s hockey will be high.
Cost, ownership and a general community desire to want to see women’s hockey succeed will all be important factors. Perhaps most importantly is the ability for BC to ice a product that can be competitive within the WWHL. This would appear to be it’s greatest challenge right now.
We played the BC Breakers at UBC three times in three nightss, two of those games were held prior to UBC versus University of Alberta women’s games.
There were many people in the rink that weekend, making it a fun atmosphere and a real showcase for the women’s game. I always love road trips to Vancouver.
When we play in the city, UBC seems like a good place to hold our games.
While training for the Summer Olympics for softball in 2000, I moved to Vancouver for eight months, played softball and took classes at Simon Fraser University.
In the evenings, I practiced hockey with the UBC men’s hockey team. It was a crazy but fun time of my life and I have often thought it would be a great place to return to someday to both live and play hockey.
While I am not sure if the interest or mechanisms exist for women’s hockey to play out of the Olympic facility, the 2010 Olympics will no doubt ignite a further interest in the game, and attract better players to play in Vancouver.
Both the WWHL and the BC Breakers would benefit greatly from a first-class facility and icing a team that can really compete and challenge one day to win the league. |