With all four league teams holding at least one practice per week, along with a better overall fitness level and a heightened state of competitiveness, the women’s teams certainly gave their male counterparts a run for their money, commitment-wise.
Now that the league has finished up for the year, certain members of three of the four league teams — the Furniture Plus Futons, Steers Insurance Curling Rangers and Bud Light Shamrocks — have joined forces as the Corner Brook Mixers to compete at the 2010 Provincial Intermediate Ladies tournament from Sept. 24-26 in St. John’s.
“We had a lot of practices this year and I thought the skill really shone through, so we decided to take a couple of girls from each team and make one big one,” said Janine Gillis, one of the most consistent offensive threats in the local league. “We’ve got a lot of skilled girls going out and some of the girls are already out there for school, so they’ll meet us out there and play too.”
Gillis seemed to recall a women’s team attempting to compete at the provincial tournament three years ago, but said it was more of a last-minute thing, whereas this team has been in the works since the early stages of the summer.
“Every year we bring it up at the beginning of the year and then it’s not brought up anymore,” she said. “This year we just kind of went with the idea and had a nice few girls interested, so we just went from there.”
The deadline for teams to apply for the tournament is Friday, so Gillis isn’t even sure what the competition will be like.
“We’re expecting to go out and get one or two wins in,” she said. “Hopefully we’ll get further, but we don’t expect to get the championship or anything because it’s our first year going and I’m sure there is going to be some good competition out there.
“Now we’re just trying to get some practices in and get a few games in so we can get used to each other as a team,” she said. “We don’t expect a whole lot this year, but hopefully this will start a trend for every year now and more and more skilled players will come out.”
Of course, provincial travel for an entire squad doesn’t come cheap and the squad will be holding a fundraiser 9:30 p.m. Friday night at Union Station to help ease the financial sting.
“Everyone is excited about the tournament and it’s going to be nice trying to get used to playing other teams after playing with and against the same girls all year,” said Gillis. “I think it’ll be fun.”
