Rivalry Series Preview: Canada vs. United States

“It’s an important alternative to see what’s potential and what might be
achieved.”

For the primary time for the reason that 2016 IIHF Women’s World Championship, Canada’s
National Women’s Team returns to Kamloops this week for a Rivalry Series
matchup in opposition to the United States. Not solely is the sport showcase the perfect
of ladies’s hockey on the iceon the ice, however it additionally offers the City of
Kamloops a chance to indicate how girls’s hockey has grown within the
neighborhood.

Six years after the United States edged Canada 1-0 in time beyond regulation within the gold
medal sport, Norm Daley, co-chair of the 2016 girls’s worlds, is feeling the
similar degree of pleasure because the world’s greatest come to the Interior.

“We’re seeing a variety of responses from the younger women in hockey who’re
within the Rivalry Series,” says Daley, who can also be president of the
Western Hockey League’s Kamloops Blazers. “These are the celebrities that they
look as much as and it’s actually thrilling to see that they’ve their function fashions
from Team Canada coming into their neighborhood.”

The Rivalry Series sport would be the third worldwide hockey occasion in
Kamloops within the final eight years; along with the ladies’s worlds, the
metropolis was host of the 2014 4 Nations Cup, when Canada claimed its 14th gold
on the match that additionally included the United States, Sweden and Finland.

At each alternative the Kamloops hockey neighborhood has not failed to indicate
its on-going assist for girls’s hockey. With a close-to-capacity crowd
anticipated for the Rivalry Series, to be performed on the Sandman Centre, residence
of the Blazers, Daley says the curiosity within the sport is evident.

“The neighborhood is actually speaking about how essential the video games are for
women and girls to see what might be achieved,” he says. “Once the
tickets had been launched, they had been snapped up instantly and reveals that
girls’s hockey may be very a lot alive.”

The legacy of the Rivalry Series, 4 Nations Cup and IIHF Women’s World
Championship goes past the on-ice product itself. Over the years, the
occasions have introduced pleasure and drawn the eye of younger ladies to
hockey, boosting registration within the metropolis.

Nathan Bosa, board chair for the Kamloops Minor Hockey Association, remembers
the 2016 girls’s worlds, and though it was earlier than his time with the KMHA,
he remembers how impactful it was for younger gamers and followers, like his
daughter, to expertise. Over the years, he says the expansion and alternative
for girls’s hockey has continued to open doorways for gamers to proceed
their taking part in careers.

“Over the final couple of years, the sport has grown and we’ve revamped
issues to supply extra assets to our leagues,” says Bosa. “Our governing
affiliation, [the Okanagan Mainline Amateur Hockey Association], has put
collectively a transparent program to maintain the ladies taking part in at a excessive degree and provides
them a path ahead.

“By operating regional groups, we’ve been capable of open the borders to have
feminine gamers come from Clearwater or Logan Lake and broaden our catchment
for groups. The morale enhance these occasions offers to the house associations is
nice, as a result of the momentum of the occasion will get folks desirous about new
concepts to proceed rising.”

Like Daley, Bosa has felt a way of pleasure throughout main as much as the
Rivalry Series. With the chance for the neighborhood to see Team Canada,
the reigning Olympic and world champions, it’s an enormous alternative to observe
the perfect on the earth.

On Thursday, Bosa and his daughter might be within the Sandman Centre for the
sport, however this time, it is going to be his daughter taking him to see what he
proudly says is “her thing, and she’s very excited to take me with her.”

“It inspires everybody,” Bosa says. “To go and see these gamers on the
ice, they play with such coronary heart and grit, the youthful ladies watch this and
actually offers them a lift in confidence and reveals what’s potential for
them.”