You’ve Come a Long Way Baby!

Elk Point Bantam Storm open 20th anniversary season in Lloyd

Back in the day when the Elk Point Storm’s new head coach Jena Colbourne played with the team they would normally travel all the way to Hanna, Big Valley and Castor just to play a game against another female team. That’s what you had to do if you wanted to play. That was 20 years ago. This is today! This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the Storm female hockey program. The Storm teams had missed a few years during that 20 year period, but was revived by the hard work and recruiting of team manager Lori Poitras three years ago and are now as strong as ever.

This past Saturday afternoon the Storm  traveled to the Border City with some new recruits in the lineup. The Blazers are a strong team and the coaching staff, knew this and really didn’t know what to expect from their young team, but after the first period that was a little one sided , the girls responded and did a smashing good job of playing  in the second period, when they opened up the scoring. Rugged defense woman Jelena ‘ Prime Time’ Parr getting the green light going coast to coast shooting one through the five hole. Assisted by Chloe ‘ Mouse’ Bendixen. Chloe has been taking power skating this year on Friday nights. She’s not a huge fan of power skating, but its really paying off, her skating has improved immensely . The Blazers tied the game, but the Storm pulled ahead again on a goal by  Halle ’the Comet’  Stybel. The ‘ Comet’ is as strong as a horse, she can pull a heavy load,  she scored another in this contest, the score 3-2, the Storm holding the one goal lead into the last minute of the second when the Blazers would tie it up 3 all.

Lots of positives in this game, the team already moving forward with the help of new assistant coach defensive specialist James Capjack. He brings a ton of technical knowledge to the team. Not only that, he brings his daughter Jadey ‘ the Lady’ Capjack, who has been playing with the peewee boys up until this point. The ‘ Lady’ is still only peewee age but fits in really well, she’s a steady stay at home defense woman. She assisted on one of the first one of ‘Comets’ goals.

Rylee “the Rocket” Warawa received the first Most Inspirational Player of the game for the 2016-17 season

The newest member of the Storm little Rylee’ the Rocket’ Warawa another peewee aged player who has been on the boys teams, was a real force forechecking and back checking all game long. She assisted on the other ‘Comet’  goal and was also named the Storm Trooper of the game. The Storm girls did not have a great third period, they came out flat, the Blazers came out fired up and. ‘ Knock , knock, knocking  on Heavens door!’   Storm goalie Heaven’ the Brick House ‘ Colbourne faced 54 shots in this game, 25 of them coming in the third period when the Storm simply ran out of gas. The Blazers scoring 2 goals in less than a minute to start the third, then added 2 more half way through the final frame, the final score 7 to 3 for the Blazers.  This coming weekend the Storm play in Wainwright on Saturday afternoon then host Lloydminster on Sunday.

Assistant coach, Art Parr, who has helped with the team the past two years, chatted with me after the game. He feels that the girls will be working on lots of skating, and conditioning this week a practice; so they can handle a full 60 minute game, not power out half way through. Great job girls!!!