Kali Walls has given them life, but hard work has the Prince George major midget female Cougars earning respect from around western Canada.
The 14-year-old goaltender moved to Prince George this fall from Kelowna to help out a Cougars squad in desperate need of a midget-aged goalie.
"Getting the call was pretty cool because I'd played with quite a few of these girls before at the B.C. Winter Games," said Walls. "I decided to come up here, well because they needed a goalie, and I wanted to play some good hockey. It's a good team. It's an opportunity of a lifetime."
The opportunity for Walls, who turns 15 in December, came up because both of the Cougars 2011-12 goalies had moved on and if head coach Stewart Malgunas couldn't find a replacement they would have to fold the team for the season.
"That was the constant all summer battle to find a goalie," said Malgunas. "I called every team in the league to ask them about extra goalies once they decided on their own goalies. I called the Vancouver team and some girls from there; nobody wanted to come up. I'd sent the email out to Kelowna.
"I was getting pretty desperate," he added. "Luckily I got the call from Kali's dad who said she would love to come up to play. It was just a ray of light. We were actually going to get to have a team this year."
The Cougars are the youngest team in the five-team B.C. Female Major Midget AAA League but have made waves this season by starting the season with a 5-6-1 record, playing mostly against the top two teams in the league. There are 13 first-year players on the midget Cougars with only two 16 year olds and one 17-year-old, injured captain Kayla Vilac.
On the weekend, the Cougars were in Richmond where they swept a two-game series against the league's second seeded team, the Pacific Ravens (5-5-2), winning 3-1 on Saturday and 4-2 on Sunday. Madison Fjellstrom led the Cougars with two goals and two assists, which moved her into second among the BCFMML scoring leaders with 10 points.
The success in Richmond came a week after Malgunas and the Cougars received an invite to attend the 35th annual Mac's Midget tournament in Calgary from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1.
"It's just a credit to how hard the girls have worked and persevered through a lot of adversity," said Malgunas. "They actually told us they had been watching our team for a while and that we were young and exciting. It's an honour to get the call."
The usually 15-team female division was added to the Mac's tournament in 2004 to complement the midget boys division. The Cougars' invite marks only the second time a female hockey team from Prince George will represent the city at the tournament. The only other Prince George team to play at the Mac's came in 2005 when the Cougars finished with an 0-3 record and were out scored 17-3.
The adversity the Cougars faced to start the season didn't end when Walls decided to join the team because each team needs to have two midget goalies carded for eligibility to play in the playoffs.
"We had to take a girl that had played here before but was basically in retirement," said Malgunas about Kourtney Trudeau. "She comes when she can, but it's really not that often she can be here. She's carded but really we only have one full-time goalie."
To add to the Cougars troubles, Walls was knocked out of action during the league's first Super Series weekend - where all five teams meet in one location and play four games each - with a high-ankle sprain. The Kelowna product returned to practice for the first time last week.
Luckily, there are two strong bantam goalies in the north for the Cougars to call upon as affiliate players - Prince George's Avery Quiring and Kitimat's Kelsey Roberts. Unfortunately for the Cougars, bantam players can only play in eight games each and, Malgunas said a request to the B.C. hockey association for a special exception was denied.
"We were very, very disappointed," said Malgunas about losing the exception by one vote. "We're here for development and it's hard because Kali got injured and we don't have a goalie in practice but we're persevering. It's a credit to the girls to just keep going."
Quiring was in net for the Cougars as they swept the Ravens last weekend.
Super weekend
The Cougars next action will come at home when they host their inaugural Super Series weekend, Dec. 14-16, at Kin 2 and 3 and CN Centre.
In addition to the Phantoms and Ravens the other teams in the league are the Thompson-Okanagan Rockets (3-5-4) and Kootenay Wildcats (4-6-2). The Cougars will play one game against each team and should have Walls back in net.
