Published: Thursday, 23 September 2021 12:40
Written by David Zammit

A trio of powerplay goals surrendered in the third period last night sunk the Swift Current Innovation Credit Union U18 Female AAA Wildcats.

In Gull Lake opening their pre-season play against the Notre Dame Hounds, Swift Current raced out to a 3-1 lead before the penalties began to rack up en route to a 4-3 loss.

Forwards Jerzey Watteyne, Sadie Keller, and Ella Wingert all scored for the Wildcats in the loss.

The duo of teams will now shift their home-and-home series to Wilcox next Thursday night.

Published: Tuesday, 14 September 2021 13:57
Written by David Zammit
The Swift Current Innovation Credit Union U18 Female AAA Wildcats are back on the ice and looking forward to the upcoming campaign.

Practices began last week for the AAA squad at Fairview Arena and Wildcats Head Coach Terry Pavely has been impressed with what he’s seen so far.

“We like what we’ve seen, the work ethic, and the pace of practice,” he said.

The mostly veteran group featuring 14 returnees will have high expectations this season according to Pavely.

“We think that we’re going to be one of the better teams in the league,” he said. “That’s part of the thing when you’re older, now our kids are a little bit stronger and know what to expect in terms of playing in the league. What that gives us, we feel with that age is a little bit of depth up and down our roster.”

Swift Current will open preseason action in Gull Lake next Wednesday night hosting the Notre Dame Hounds before heading to Wilcox on September 30 to finish off the home-and-home.

Just a couple of days later (October 2-3) the Wildcats will host a Swift Current Showcase with all eight Saskatchewan Female U18 AAA Hockey League teams attending to round out preseason action.

“We’re calling it an exhibition showcase tournament,” he said. “We’ve got some scouts from NCAA hockey, U Sports schools coming, ACAC, ACHA from down in the United States, so we’ve got a wide array of scouts coming out here. It’s easy for them because all the teams are in one place. We will get two more exhibition games there.”

They’ll open regular-season action on October 10 in the Battleford against the Sharks.

Published: Friday, 10 September 2021 12:53 Written by David Zammit

For the fourth consecutive summer, a Swift Current Innovation Credit Union U18 Female AAA Wildcats player was off to the Hockey Canada U18 Summer Showcase Development Camp.

This past summer it was Moosomin product Ava Metzger that received the call to attend the camp in Calgary from July 29 to August 5.

“At first when I got the email I was like ‘wow is this for me?’ but yeah it was good,” she said. “Obviously as a kid, I’d just shoot pucks on the driveway and I’d have the one Hockey Canada puck and then that’s the first thing I thought of when I got the email. Pretty awesome to be one step closer to that goal of playing on team Canada.”

The second-year Wildcats forward received a pile of feedback while at the camp through on-ice and video sessions, games, and meetings.

“They’re really big on habits, everything came back to our habits, so that was one of the big takeaways,” she said.

According to Metzger the first day of the camp didn’t start off well, as a teammate was in close contact with a false positive on the flight to Calgary forcing the entire team to be sidelined.

“So we ended up having to quarantine the first day, our tests came back negative, so it was good, it was just another rest day for us,” she said.

Past Wildcats to attend the camp are Baylee Kirwan in 2020, Taylor Lind in 2019, and Taylor Kirwan in 2018.

Published: Friday, 23 April 2021 16:31
Written by David Zammit

The Swift Current Innovation Credit Union Wildcats have their roster for next season just about set already.

The U18 AAA club will be returning 14 players next season and they’ve reached agreements with another five players after recent tryouts.

Wildcats Head Coach Terry Pavely said the organization normally saves a few roster spots for their August camp and lets players battle it out for spots but this year is different.

“We just felt the kids we wanted were here,” he said. “Some of them were in our backyard and some came down and skated with us, we just got to the point where we’ve decided on 19 kids so far and we’ve got on spot open.”

Currently, the Wildcats have 11 forwards and six defencemen committed for the 2021-22 season, leaving the 20th roster spot for a 12th forward or seventh defenceman to join the group.

“If we find the right player, we might add one, if not we’re happy to go with 19,” he said.

Three of the five additions to the squad are forwards in Cydny Price (played for Wildcats U18 AA last year), Olivia Kirwan (played for Wildcats U18 AA last year), and Addison Eurich (played for Northwest Sharks U18 AA last year).

A third member from the Wildcats U18 AA squad last year will move up in Amiyah Jones, a defenceman from Dinsmore.

And one of the final holes to fill for the club was a second goalie in which Karlee Lehner will fill. She played for U18 AA Prince Albert Foxes’ this past year.

Published: Tuesday, 20 April 2021 13:37 Written by David Zammit

It wasn’t the end to the season the Swift Current Innovation Credit Union Wildcats were hoping for.

The Swift Current team was only able to play seven games in total, five regular-season contests and two pre-season games, before the Saskatchewan Female U18 AAA Hockey League came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic near the end of November.

Wildcats Head Coach Terry Pavely said it was a very different year for all sports teams and his team was no exception to that, however, he was pleased with the progress his players made in practices since league play was suspended.

“I really think one thing that was evident and one thing we all learned as coaches, is the extra skill development and really being creative in coming up with a little bit more skill-oriented practices and you had to do that in groups of eight,” he said. “I think for our girls it was very beneficial. Now four or five months of it was a little bit too long but we saw huge improvements in our girls.”

The skill development will play a huge factor for U18 AAA club next season as they’ll return 14 players.

“Our shooting, our skills with the puck, puck handling, tight turns, our passing, we really noticed a huge difference in our passing,” he said. “So those basic skills, that all players need, I think we saw a huge gap of improvement.”

Pavely applauded the entire team for participating in multiple practices weekly with a focus just on skill development, while the season’s fate kept slipping away.

“I think that’s another reason we saw high improvement is our players really bought into what we were doing,” he said. “Even though I know it might have gotten old for them, they never let us know that and they just kept working hard.”

Pavely believes the team will now forge on with a bit more skill development in the future, however, almost the entire year on the tactical side of the game has been lost so he’ll have to catch his squad up on that in the fall.

One of the overlooked parts in not being able to complete the season is seeing how Swift Current would have stacked up come playoff time.

“This season we thought we were going to be one of the top teams, us, Regina, and Notre Dame, we thought were maybe the top three, you think you have an opportunity to win again,” Pavely said.

The team had four graduating players this season, captain Baylee Kirwan, forward Calli Arnold, assistant captain Kamryn Johnson, and goalie Amaya Giraudier.

“In our five league games and two exhibition games they were all really good and that’s what you need,” he said. “Arnold came in and had seven points in five league games… Baylee Kirwan was up there in points… Johnson as a dman was really having a breakout season offensively already had four points in five games. And Amaya in net, you knew what you were getting, every time she’s in the net we had an opportunity to win.”

The Wildcats have already filled the majority of their roster spots for next season and we’ll have an in-depth story on that later in the week.