Every trip with a female hockey club is an adventure when you're from the Yukon. As per usual, we landed in Kelowna with a mix of high-end veterans pulling along talented but extremely young U13 girls at a U15 rep tournament.

All this with three games under our belt! But the Yukon Wild were up for the ride.

The tournament featured some of the B.C. powerhouses, including three teams potentially bound for provincials. With a team full of jitters, we started off against the home team Summerland Jets and it was an uphill battle. Despite all this, the team held them to a 3-1 score almost halfway through the game before the wheels fell off. 11 year old Lily Sallis-Clark was shell shocked and was struggling as the game went on, but this was understandable and there’s a good twist to Lily’s play coming up….

Game MVP was Alia Drummond with a goal and the Warrior award went to Danica Johnson after she sprained her wrist, then took a stick to the neck but stayed on until the puck left the zone! At one point we had three players getting various wraps and ice applied as Summerland brought a physical game.

Needless to say, no one was thrilled with the result, but the team was building through 10 minute segments and taking our wins this way.

Prior to the game, the coaching staff asked a few of the girls privately who they thought should be the captains for the team and three or four of them had the same answer. Their instincts were correct and we named Heidi (the professor) Nash, Callie (Big Wig) Quaile and Alia (Drumstick ) Drummond as the leadership group. These three have been mentoring the younger group forever it seems, and have been leading them unofficially for a few years and the time was right to make it official.

Regrouping for game two, the team continued to focus on attitude and effort, all they could control, and Lily spent some time focusing on the mental aspect of the game and they were ready to roll. Facing a tough team in Castlegar, the group continued to push and Lily found her groove. The game was 2-0 after one, but the constant compete required to play at this level was new and this young group found it hard to match in the second period as Castlegar stormed the net, putting in six more in the second frame. The girls refocused for the third and only allowed a single goal with 28 seconds left on the clock, while adding one of their own from Callie Quaile.

Lily Sallis-Clark got the nod as the Warrior for her comeback performance and transformation, while Callie Quaile was named MVP.

With the identical mindset, the Yukon Wild females went into their Saturday night tilt, looking for small wins and growth.

Things started ugly with Kamloops scoring 45 seconds in and then adding another minutes later. But the last 10 minutes of the first were 1-0 Wild – one goal accomplished (win a 10-minute segment). The team reset for the second period. The next 10 minutes were 0-0, another win for the good guys, and then momentum happened. In sports you see this all the time. The Wild scored two goals late in the period (Callie Quaile completing the hat trick!). That was another 10 minute chunk won. Kamloops answered with their own goal late as well, but it didn’t matter. Heading into the third period tied 3-3 was a massive win and the message was clear: the Wild had nothing to lose. The game went back and forth with the teams exchanging goals (Kasey Mckenna with the clutch goal for the Wild). Then with six minutes on the clock, hard work paid its dividends and Sophie (Wings) Drummond put a puck on net that snuck through.

To this point, winning was secondary to the team, but now with a chance to steal a game and eliminate a very strong team from a semi final they were already planning for, they dug in. The clock couldn’t count down fast enough and Lily continued her stellar play, shutting the door and sealing the improbable victory for the Yukon Wild.

This was and will be a turning point for this group – this game showed them how hard you have to compete and that everyone has to be at that level to beat teams like Kamloops.

Lily Sallis stood on her head and made the choice of MVP very easy. This was accentuated by the climb she made from her shaky first game to being the absolute rock of our team, buying us time to find our game.

The line of Sofia Jan-Asp, Eva Van Heel and Olivia Skookum were tasked with converting themselves into a shutdown unit, their only goal – never get scored on! This group embraced the difficult task and when the Wild were pushing for a lead they patiently waited their turn to have another shut down shift. This effort earned the entire line the Warrior award for the game and it was well earned.

The final game was going to be the toughest yet. Facing Kamloops in a rematch of the previous night, the team knew that they would be coming in waves and with chips on their shoulders due to the previous night's loss. Kamloops jumped out to an early 3-0 lead in the first ten minutes. Regrouping, the Wild shut down the team for the rest of the first. A reinvigorated Kamloops team again came with an intensity that the physically and emotionally drained Wild found hard to match and another three snuck in before the intermission halfway through the period.

The intermission revealed a battered team with knees swelling, wrists wrapped, hips aching and thumbs bent. Wanting to go home feeling good about themselves, the team decided to set a stretch goal. Win the half-game and go home on a high.

Despite losing Alia Drummond to a knee issue partway through the third and having a cast of others operating at less than full capacity, the team played Kamloops to a 1-0 score in the second half, which was a victory in the Wild dressing room.

This team was made up of six U13 girls (Danica Johnson, Maya Bulmer, Kasey Mckenna, Sophie Drummond, Ella Johnston and Lily Sallis-Clark), six first-years (Stefanie Nemeth, Sofia-Jan Asp, Evan Cyre, Adrena Macdonald, Eva Van Heel and Olivia Skookum) and only four second year U15 players (Callie Quaile, Heidi Nash, Alia Drummond and Teja Lalonde).

Despite being undersized and lacking experience, the amount of learning and growth from game one to four was incredible and the U15’s continue to pave the way for the U13’s who are paving the way for a wave of U11’s coming up.

Stay tuned as the U11 team heads to Wickfest and the U13’s and U18’s combine with NWT for two additional teams. It'll be exciting to watch the girls finally play in the right age bracket!

–Submitted by Dan Johnson