It’s difficult enough to make an impression on coaches amidst a horde of 80 of Alberta’s best young hockey players, but to do so with a troublesome injury made a Blackie player’s achievement that much more impressive.
With a broken elbow Blackie resident Mason McCarty’s prospects of surviving the first round of cuts for Team Alberta’s outfit for the U16 Western Challenge Cup appeared dim.
“I only played a game and a half and left a couple of days early because I broke my elbow,” McCarty said. “I got hit coming out of the zone, a guy got me weird with my arm extended.
“I thought I played well in the first game and alright in the second so I was kind of hoping (to make it), but nothing is a guarantee.”
The 15-year-old forward did enough in his short stint on the ice to be short-listed as one of 34 players for the final round of evaluations for Team Alberta in November.
The U16 Western Challenge Cup features the four Western Canadian provinces going toe-to-toe in a round-robin tournament. Alberta is looking to three-peat as champions, and is the only province to have won the tournament since its incarnation in 2009.
McCarty, a fourth-round pick of the Western Hockey League’ Red Deer Rebels in May, said evaluations for the 2012 version of Team Alberta were no cakewalk.
“You have a practice in the morning and usually a game at night, but they’re always watching,” McCarty said of the constant evaluation. “It’s all about character there and off-ice you’ve got to be respectful and everything is about the team there, you go everywhere with the team, it’s always a pack mentality.”
The five-foot-seven winger said the added bulk, close to eight pounds, he’s put on this summer paid dividends against the best competition he’s ever seen.
“It’s kind of tough, there’s a lot of big and strong guys, but I’m finally starting to get a little bit stronger,” said McCarty, who wants to be 150 pounds by summer’s end. “Hopefully, I’m hitting my growth spurt soon here.”
The shortlist dwindled down Alberta’s best 1997 born players from 81 to 34 at the Camrose-based summer development camp in July.
“We want to put together a highly competitive team and we think out of these 34 athletes we will be able to do that,” said Team Alberta head coach Bryce Thoma in a press release. “To go from 80 players down to 34 is no easy task, but it will be exciting to watch all these players perform with their club teams.”
McCarty is hoping to be a member of the Strathmore UFA Midget AAA Bisons in the 2012-13 season. Training camp for the Bisons, the runners-up in the 2011-12 Mac’s Midget tournament, gets underway on Sept. 1.
The final evaluations for Team Alberta, where the top 20 are selected for the Challenge Cup, take place Nov. 1-4 in Calgary.
McCarty, the only player from south of Calgary among the 34 remaining, said he will have the best chance of making the squad if he stays within his game.
“Just to do my own thing,” he said of his goals. “You can’t really play anyone else’s game, you can’t do anything special, you’ve just got to play your game, get the job done and that’s what they want.”
For more information on the U16 Western Challenge Cup visit www.hockeyalberta.ca
