Local teen travels to Alberta Cup
One local teenager will be taking a step towards realizing his hockey dreams later on this week in Lethbridge.
Kaleb Denham, 14, will be the lone Innisfail representative at the Alberta Cup, a provincial tournament for the top male bantam players from each zone in the province.
After a series of tryouts in March, Denham made the cut for the Central Alberta Thrashers as a defenseman. Only 20 players from each zone make the regional team.
“I am very happy about making the team,” said Denham, who was unsure if he was going to make it not going into tryouts.
“It was fairly tough tryouts playing against a lot of the top AAA players.”
During the regular season Denham plays for the Red Deer Rebels White Bantam AAA team in Red Deer.
Denham said one of the reasons he is excited to be playing in the tournament is because there are always a lot of scouts there for high level teams.
The Alberta Cup acts as a showcase for the province’s top WHL draft eligible players, in this year’s case, those players who were born in the year 1996.
The tournament is hosted by Hockey Alberta and this is the 25th year of the Alberta Cup. Some of the players who have passed through the tournament include Zach Boychik, Dany Heatley, Jay Bouwmeester, and Dion Phaneuf.
Bowden basketball girls fight odds
The Bowden Grandview High School girls basketball team may not have had the numbers of a championship team but made up for it in hustle this past season.
The team started out with six players at the beginning of the season until one unfortunate injury that left the team with only one full line of girls.
After their teammate was injured the remaining three Grade 12s, one Grade 11, and one Grade 10 student knew they had their work cut out for them.
“We had to play very clean ball,” said Kelly Brewster, one of the team coaches.
“We only had two girls foul out of a game all season which is pretty good.”
Despite having to play every minute of every game the girls led a winning season that qualified them for the zone championships. In zones the girls just missed the consolation finals after one girl fouled out of the game, forcing them to forfeit the game at half.
Brewster said one of the main reasons the girls were so successful was that they were all good friends both on and off of the court.
“They all supported each other and kept encouraging each other to make it through the games.”
Brewster co-coaches the team with another Bowden community member and volunteer Jennifer Wood.
