Foothills Ringette made a golden breakthrough at a platinum event.
The Foothills Snipers U14 team became the first team in Foothills Ringette association history to win a full-ice tournament this month when it took the SPRA Platinum Ring event, held Nov. 10-13 in Sherwood Park.
“It’s been a grind for sure,” said Foothills Snipers head coach Rob Padget. “The girls being a very new, small, young association and Jaimie Nelson, the president, has done a lot of work getting it off the ground.
“We spent a few years losing quite a bit, but gaining confidence and experience and camaraderie, but they didn’t have a lot of success on the ice, just their own individual and team goals that we were meeting.”
That makes the triumph all the more sweet for those helping to push Foothills Ringette, which launched in 2016, forward in a step-by-step fashion.
Padget said the success is both long overdue and well deserved.
“They’ve worked for a long time here to get to a point where they’re now having this success,” the coach added. “The core group of girls, I know, were over the moon for all of the work they’ve put in for these four years and not really having much tangible success.
“And for the new girls it was also just a really good bonding weekend for everyone to get tighter than they already are.”
In Sherwood Park, the Snipers navigated through a three-game round robin with an undefeated record with the top-two teams advancing to the A-final.
Foothills matched up with the host Sherwood Park for a second time in the tournament with the gold medal on the line, scoring a 5-2 result.
“We had two really close games with them that were tight and came right down to the end,” Padget said. “It was a lot of fun, even when it got tense the girls stayed calm and positive.
“It was competitive right to the end, we had a late goal to get that three-goal spread and made a few saves late. Probably the strength of the tournament was as a team how we played in our own end and moving the ring out of our end.”
The U14 team is a mix of a core group of players who’ve been together for four years along with a couple additions, both new to the sport and new to the association.
“The strength is definitely just how close they are,” Padget said. “They’re such a close group and even the new girls fit right in immediately.
“They get along so well, they’re so positive as a group and they just work extraordinarily well from the goalie all the way out.”
Foothills Ringette offers competitive league programs at the U14, U12 and U10 levels and its skill development FUNdamentals program.
In February, Foothills is hosting the Foothills Freeze event featuring teams in five divisions with the tournament held at High River’s Bob Snodgrass Recplex.
For more information, visit foothillsringette.com.
