SAHA female prep squad gearing up for next opponent

By RYAN MCCRACKEN on October 21, 2020.

rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com@MHNMcCracken

South Alberta Hockey Academy’s U18 female prep squad is back to the waiting game – but this time they know another matchup is in sight.

After earning back-to-back wins over the Oyen U15 boys squad on the weekend, the newly formed Canadian Sport School Hockey League squad is entering a provincially mandated 14-day break from competition in order to enter a new cohort with a new team for an upcoming series. While an official schedule is still being worked out, SAHA U18 female prep head coach Evan Vossen says he anticipates his players will be back on the ice in November for at least a few games.

“We’re just ironing out a few different details here,” said Vossen, whose squad will operate in a regional series schedule with Edmonton’s Northern Alberta Xtreme and Calgary’s Edge School. “Obviously we have to take our 14-day break now if we change opponents, so that’s probably going to push us into early-to-mid-November before we get to play again, just because of the way everything is structured through Hockey Alberta and obviously with the COVID requirements.”

Although the 14-day break means no competition, SAHA is still able to conduct regular practices to build on what they accomplished in their 7-2 and 4-3 victories in Oyen.

“We have a pretty good foundation in terms of our habits and our details in our game, which is what we focused on here for the first little bit,” said Vossen.

“As we move into this next few weeks we’ll just look at building on a few different things – our breakouts and transition stuff, and then a little bit more in the offensive zone too, just to try to create a few more opportunities.”

Chantelle Richard led SAHA with three goals and two assists through the weekend, while Kendal Davidson followed up with three of her own plus an assist, Sydney Chrusch had a goal and two helpers and Alyssa McCasey potted a pair.

All three of SAHA’s goaltenders contributed to the victories as well. Devyn Amundson stopped all six shots she faced in the first half of Saturday’s win, then Sydney Carlson stopped 9-of-11 down the stretch. Hali Lawrence entered to start Game 2 and allowed a pair on eight shots before Carlson returned to the crease and turned away 8-of-9 to secure the win.

“I was happy with the way all three played,” said Vossen. “For all three girls, it was just nice to get them some game action to get that underneath their belt here, so we can have that moving forward.”

Male squad shooting for speed

SAHA’s male U18 prep squad will be using their 14-day break for a similar focus after going 1-2 against Edge School’s U17s this weekend.

Head coach Brayden Desjardins says there are a few things to clean up in every area of the ice, but the focus will be speed in transition as they prepare to host NAX for a three-game set, Nov. 6-8.

“We’ll review the video. We’ve got some structure stuff that we’ve got to take care of,” said Desjardins. “We’ll continue to really work on our D-zone and our neutral-zone transition. We want to be a team that plays with speed, so we’ll really harp on that over the next two weeks and hopefully we look to have some positive results against NAX.”

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