Junior league lets women play hockey; Rebels want to win it

Article content

With no real league available after she graduated from the under-18 ranks, Brianna Westerman thought her competitive hockey career was over.

Article content

Article content

So Westerman helped coach her former team and played recreationally in the women’s division of the Adult Safe Hockey League, never thinking that four years later she would be getting a second — and final — chance to win a title in the two-year old, six-team Saskatchewan Junior Female Hockey League.

Article content

“I’m super grateful that I got to play hockey again,” said Westerman, the 22-year-old captain of the Regina Rebels, who are slated to open the league’s best-of-three championship series Friday against the hometown Outlook Mainline Ice Hawks.

Game 2 is scheduled for Sunday, 7:30 p.m., at the Al Ritchie Memorial Centre.

“I truly thought after Grade 12, ‘I’m done. That was my hockey career. I had fun.’ So it’s kinda surreal that I’m going to the rink to practise, going to games on the bus with a team again and playing a competitive sport,” said Westerman.

“I’m also grateful that girls younger than me will have a place to play. But it’s my last year and I do wanna go out with a bang. I wanna bring home the trophy for our team because I grew up being a Rebel, so it’s super exciting!”

Second-place Regina (16-4-0) advanced to the final by sweeping the third-place Saskatoon Prairie Blaze (14-4-2), who eliminated the Rebels en route to last year’s championship.

Led by league scoring leader Haley Braun, who had 65 points (42 goals, 23 assists) in 20 games, Outlook placed atop the league standings with a 15-3-2 record before sweeping the fourth-place Taylor Toyota Lumsden Lynx (6-14-0) in their first-round series. Outlook won the last three of four regular-season meetings against Regina.

Article content

Article content

“It was a little bit of revenge against Saskatoon,” said Rebels head coach Steve Lang. “We’ve had some good battles so it was good to be on top this year.

“Against Outlook we’ll have to contain (Braun). She’s pretty hard to stop.”

Lang has been coaching female hockey in Regina for about 15 years and took the Rebels job last season. His oldest daughter, Nyah, is on Lang’s current squad while her younger sisters, Aryanna and Alorah, are progressing through the Rebels younger teams. Last year’s captain, Reauna Blight, became one of Lang’s assistants after graduating and the coach hopes Westerman, who is taking kinesiology courses at the University of Regina, might follow the same path.

“Boys have so many options, with a whole bunch of junior leagues, you can play college or play in the minors or go to Europe,” said Lang. “With these girls you can play AAA and then there was a gap, just when they were graduating high school. So you either go to college or play Adult Safe at 11 o’clock at night.

“I’d say 90 per cent of the players go to university or work. Some do both, with full loads that include night classes on Tuesdays or Thursdays. So the league took the stance that most of the games will be played on weekends, which is good.”

Article content

Lang said the caliber of hockey has improved noticeably from the league’s first year, with the addition of graduates from the Saskatchewan Female U18 AAA Hockey League and others, like Braun, who have played university or college hockey.

“The first year was tough just finding girls because some had been out of hockey for three years,” said Lang. “The thing I’ve heard from a lot of people who have come out to watch is, ‘Wow! I did not expect it to be this good, or this aggressive.’

“One guy who came and watched the last game goes, ‘If I didn’t see the ponytails coming out of their helmets, I thought it was boys’ hockey.’ ”

Regina is backstopped by goalie Ryleigh Carson, whose 1.24 goals-against average led the league. Westerman was fourth in scoring with 35 points, behind teammates Abigail Manz (59) and Nyah Lang (49).

The Regina Leader-Post has created an Afternoon Headlines newsletter that can be delivered daily to your inbox so you are up to date with the most vital news of the day. Click here to subscribe.

With some online platforms blocking access to the journalism upon which you depend, our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark leaderpost.com and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed. Click here to subscribe.

Article content