Last season the Ray's Stucco Prince George Rush broke new ground in the three-decade history of ringette in the city when the team won the open division provincial championship.
Made up of players scattered across B.C. in Terrace, Prince George and Vancouver, the Rush will finally put its game face on again this weekend at the Burnaby Icebreaker tournament. The six-team open division tournament starts for the Rush today at 7 a.m. against Vancouver. The Rush is guaranteed four games leading up to Monday's playoff round.
Although the Rush are the only adult-aged team in northern B.C., lacking a league to develop their game-time strategies, it didn't seem to hamper their run for the title last year.
"We haven't played together as a team yet but it was the same last year and that kind of worked out well for us," said Justine Lamothe, 18, now in her 10th season of ringette. "Everyone is really talented. We've all been playing for a long time and we all know what we're doing and it just kind of works out."
"They have a league [in the Okanagan, Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island] and we only have one team here so it's kind of hard. Those other teams have to travel here for provincials [March 6-9, 2014] and then people will come and maybe ringette will get advertised a little more."
Prince George is hosting its 22nd annual Joy Hoffman Memorial tournament this weekend at the Kin Centre but there are no open division teams involved. Organizers long ago gave up trying to attract teams from the Okanagan, Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island and the Rush is resigned to the fact it will have to travel to out-of-town tournaments for competition. The team has roadtrips planned to Kelowna and Richmond this winter, leading up to the provincial championships in Prince George in March.
The Rush range in age from 17 to 28. Rush centre Saynia Pickering, 17, is back on blades after missing the entire 2012-13 season with a torn MCL, suffered while playing soccer. But after surgery and long-term conditioning to rebuild her knee she's good to go again.
Pickering's injury kept her out of the provincial championship and she knows that despite the lack of playing opportunities for the Prince George team, they'll be ready when they hit the ice today in Burnaby
"We usually do pretty good and last year they won provincials," said Pickering. "In my previous years of playing we're usually in the top three. We have 16 players and everyone that plays is really strong."
The Rush roster includes two male players -- Rory Bird of Terrace and Joey Matzelle of Prince George.
Three Rush players -- Pickering, Lamothe, Caitlin Zacharias -- are trying out for the under-20 B.C. team for the 2015 Canada Winter Games, among a group of 100 players invited to team tryouts in Burnaby next weekend.
"There's lots of talent around in B.C. and I'm going to have to put everything into it if I want to make it," said Pickering. "It would be an amazing opportunity to play in the Games, that's totally a once-in-a-lifetime thing."
"That would be cool if a couple of us were on the team," said Lamothe, a forward. "We're the oldest age group to try out for that team. There are a lot of younger girls from the Lower Mainland I know are pretty good."
Fifty players will make the cut from next weekend's tryouts and those 50 will form two traveling tournament teams, from which the final cuts will be made to determine the 22-player roster.
"These three girls are just as good as the ones from the Lower Mainland," said Rush head coach Madeleine Crandell. "They played on the [B.C.] double-A team that went to nationals two years ago so they have the experience. The only thing they're going to lack right now is not having any games up north."
