Angela Burke was recently named to the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns hockey team, becoming the first female hockey player from the Yukon to make the jump to that level.

That's a cool feeling, she says.

A week before leaving for Alberta, however, she was feeling anything but.

The 18-year-old says she was involved in a hit-and-run traffic collision mid-August, which "totaled” her car and left her with a severe wrist injury.

Doctors, thinking she had broken her scaphoid bone, put a cast on her arm; but the cast was removed a week later when doctors realized the injury was a bad sprain.

The incident was a touch of "really bad luck,” said Burke, who is taking general science courses during her first year.

"It's still affecting me now. I'm allowed to play, but for the first week I was here I wasn't allowed on the ice because I wasn't cleared.”

Burke needs to be able to move her wrist to 80 per cent to be cleared.

The timing couldn't be worse, she added.

"It was hard to deal with the stress, and everything with moving to a new place, and then I didn't really need that extra pressure. Right now I'm just focusing on recovering, getting my shot back and trying to work my way back on the team,” Burke said.

The left-winger is especially anxious to get clearance for the Pronghorns games this weekend, when the Lethbridge squad will travel to the University of Calgary to take on the Dinos in an exhibition game.

Four-time Olympic medalist Hayley Wickenheiser recently returned to university, after a 10-year break in her studies, to play with the Dinos.

Burke said the prospect of playing against her idol is both exciting and nerve-wracking.

"She's definitely the best, so it's obviously nerve-racking. She's probably been half the team's idol growing up,” Burke said.

In the lead up to the season, which kicks off next month, the Pronghorn's are on the ice five days a week with three off-ice sessions.

"I've been expecting it,” Burke said of the training schedule. "I had a lot of ice time last year too and it was hard to juggle.”

She got the chance to train with the Pronghorns last December, after she sent head coach Chandy Kaip an e-mail and a video of her playing.

"Basically if I was going to commit to the team she was going to commit to me,” Burke said.

Last season, Burke played with the Midget Mustangs boys B team, because there is no high-level female hockey offered in the Yukon, like there are in the provinces, she said.

But between playing with the Mustangs and training with Jake Jirousek and his All-

Out Hockey Program, Burke saw plenty of ice.

"We got to play different men's teams in Whitehorse, definitely high-level hockey, and better than any girls hockey I would have been playing if I had moved to Fort St. John or even Prince George, so there was no need for me to move. I was really glad to have the support in town,” Burke said.

In contrast, the majority of the Pronghorns team comes from AAA teams from across the Prairies.

Burke is adjusting to the style of female hockey after playing with the boys all last season.

"Girls use their speed more because they can't throw their body around as much as male hockey, so it's just a little bit different. It's still great; it's really high level and

I'm really excited,” Burke said, adding that girls growing up in Whitehorse shouldn't be afraid to play with the boys.

"I just hope that I can keep inspiring them, keep them involved, and hopefully they train really hard this year for Canada Winter Games, because you never know what can happen, you could get asked to go to Calgary for a team Canada U-18 camp.”