Goaltender Jocelyn Wynnyk needs little motivation.

Her motivation comes from two different places.

The first is that she simply loves hockey.

The second is to make her mother – who has terminal cancer – proud.

"(My mother) loves hockey,” the 16-year-old said.

"I'm trying to make the best of it and trying to really show her what I can do. She says she's proud of me and stuff, but I just want to be the best I can for her.

"(Hockey is) something I love doing and am always going to end up doing.”

That motivation saw her and the rest of the Team Yukon girls hockey team through the 2011 Canada Winter Games in Halifax, N.S., where the territory faced roughly 400 shots in six games.

Wynnyk was one of nine Yukon female hockey players who attended the U18 zone camp in Prince George, B.C., last weekend.

Six of those Yukoners made the cut, earning the right to compete in the BC Cup in Salmon Arm from April 27-May 1.

Wynnyk will travel south with Northern Avalanche teammates Ashtyn Sandulak and Lynsey Keaton of Whitehorse, Dana van Vliet from Haines Junction, Adrianne Dewhurst from Teslin and Tshayla Nothstein from Faro.

Team Yukon CWG coach Louis Bouchard said making this cut was the first step to making the national team.

The second is to make it through the BC Cup.

The third is to make it past May 1, when 46 players from across B.C. and the Yukon will be chosen to attend a training camp.

Finally, 20 of those 46 will be selected to represent B.C. at the National Hockey Championships in November.

And you can take it from there.

"Some of them didn't even know how to skate three years ago, so for them to go to U18 in their first year of eligibility and make the cut makes us feel very proud of the work and the program we've put together,” said Bouchard, who has been working with this group of girls for the past three years in the lead up to the Canada Winter Games.

Bouchard encouraged a number of his players to attend the zone camp last weekend, which anyone could attend.

Interest from nine players was higher than he's ever seen.

Typically, one Yukon player will make the trip down to the zone camp each year.

Three players attended the U16 camp previously, and his daughter, Alex, attended the U18 camp in 2009.

A number of factors contributed to the high interest level this year, he said.

Seeing improvements at the end of two years' work towards the Canada Winter Games helped.

"They had a great year also. A lot of them see this as their hockey year; they're putting a lot of effort into this. So it's a combination of all these factors…they're ready and they wanted to do it,” Bouchard said.

Naturally, the girls were pumped to make the cut.

"I thought that it'd be a lot of fun going down there and playing with girls who are actually at the level that I want to be at…that I'm at, I guess,” Wynnyk said.

"We have training up here, but we don't have enough girls to play at that level. Just going down there and seeing that level was a lot of fun, and seeing where you had to be and what you had to go up against.

"There's some girls down there that were really good, some just average, and when we go to Salmon Arm, it's going to be pretty tough. It's like the best of the best.”

For Sandulak, it was about staying positive.

"My attitude was really positive, and I think maybe if I just keep staying positive that

I'll be a bit better,” said the 15-year-old right-winger. "Because when you stay negative, you bring yourself down: ‘Uggh, I'm not doing that well, I'm not going to make it.' But then when you stay positive, you think, ‘I'm going to make the team,

I'm going to make the team,' and you really have a better chance and you can push yourself through drills.”

And it paid.

Upon hearing word she'd made the cut, she said, "My face lit up and I had a huge smile on my face.”

Bouchard said the surge in numbers is an indication that the program is headed in the right direction.

"The program in general, we're getting better at it, the coaching staff and myself,” he said. "The parents are getting into the game also. For boys it's always been easy; there's enough boys to pick an A Team, a B Team, at every level, whereas with girls, there's very few players, and then there's even fewer that are willing to commit to that kind of a program.

"It's a program that costs a lot of money. It's time intensive, so it's a big commitment on the part of the athletes – and the parents. This year, the program is a little better, and the parents are in tune, so if the parents are pushing us, it makes it a lot easier.”

Bouchard is helping the girls prepare for the BC Cup – where the hockey will be better and the players fitter – by sticking to the program.

Add to that more dry-land training.

"Because at even skill, they'll always go with the fittest athlete.”