One of the province’s biggest grassroots female hockey tournaments is expanding its horizons once again.
The 12th annual Okotoks Female Hockey Classic will have a first this year with a team from the far north joining the 48-team, 10-division field of the marquee competition held Nov. 15-17.
“Because we’ve been around for so long now I think we have quite a bit of interest in this tournament – it’s never really an issue to fill it,” said tournament co-chair Jennifer Dustow. “There seems to be lots of female teams around, it hasn’t been an issue, which is good for hockey in our country that our females are still interested in playing when their futures are uncertain still.”
Though the competition takes place at the same time as Calgary’s popular Wickfest, the Classic continues to be a big draw both near and far.
“We have teams coming this year from the Yukon,” Dustow said. “They’ve just got a female program going. They don’t have much opportunity to play all girls teams so they’re excited to get down here and be in this tournament.
“We’re always excited to help foster those kind of things. What we typically look for is if a team contacts us and says ‘we’re new, we’ve never had a girls team before, we’re excited about that.’ We always want to make sure we get those teams in because it’s an awesome experience for them.”
With teams descending upon Big Rock Country, from places ranging from Fort McMurray to Regina and Saskatoon, comes a pretty significant economic boon to the area on a weekend that coincides with the Light Up Okotoks event.
Dustow said there are upwards of 750 athletes competing and you can safely double or triple that number in terms of family and friends taking in the action.
“We haven’t been on that (Light Up) weekend for five or six years now,” Dustow said. “It’s something we’ve really highlighted to our visiting teams, that this is an exciting event, we’ve put a link to the Light Up Okotoks event and we’re hoping to get as many people as possible downtown to take that in and help support our local businesses.
“The economy in Alberta is suffering a little bit so hopefully we can help spread that around a little bit for our little town.”
Okotoks will ice 14 teams in the competition — three in Midget, three in Bantam, four in Peewee, three in Atom and one in Novice. The Midget age group is particularly large locally given there are two other Rocky Mountain Raiders teams which also draw from the Foothills area.
“That’s five for Okotoks,” Dustow said. “Which is amazing.”
As well, the Rocky Mountain Raiders Bantam Elite squad will have an exhibition game on Nov. 16 at 2:30 p.m. at the Pason Centennial Green Arena.
The tournament takes place at the Pason Centennial Arenas, Murray Arena and Piper Arena in the Okotoks Recreation Centre as well as the Scott Seaman Sports Rink in Heritage Heights.
For more information go to okotoksfemalehockey.com
