Joe McWilliams

Lakeside Leader

Slave Lake’s U18 Female Thunder hockey team is competing for a provincial title this coming weekend in Strathmore. It’s the capper on a highly successful season.

Last week The Leader interviewed team captain Tayla Warman. At five foot, 11 inches, she towers over everyone else on the ice, but she’s only 16 and has two years of minor hockey ahead of her.

Warman plays on a line with Mikka Sinclair and Maddison Green, which tore up the league this season. In fact, Slave Lake players occupied the top four spots in the league scoring race, with Jorgia Green rounding out the top four.

In spite of the undefeated season, the team did not have an easy time of it.

“It took a lot of hard work from everyone,” Warman says. Only two or three games, early on, were what might be called ‘blowouts.’

Last year’s version of the Thunder was undermanned. They still did okay – losing to Beaverlodge in the final. This season, with an influx of players from Wabasca and elsewhere, they did much better. Warman says she’s noticed quite a difference all around.

“There’s a lot of commitment,” she says. “Everybody was really competitive, and people were willing to put in the work.”

Speaking of commitment, the four girls on the team from Wabasca show up for every practice, Warman says, which is certainly saying something.

The Green-Sinclair-Warman line, which has proved so hard for opposing teams to handle, was not in place at the start of the season. Warman says head coach Chris Hatch had them together on a couple of powerplays, and must have liked what he saw.

They’ve been playing together ever since, having a great deal of success and look to continue it in the provincials.

“We just clicked,” she says.

Asked about the strongest points of her linemates, Warman says Sinclair’s shot is probably the most outstanding feature of her game. Green, she says, is really good at digging the puck out of the corners and is “a really good passer.”

How about Warman?

“Shooting, too.”

If the team has a vulnerable spot, it’s in net. Not that Jerzie Green is a weak spot. Just the opposite. She is very strong between the pipes, but there’s been no backup goalie. If she got hurt and couldn’t play, “it would not be good,” Warman says.

However, the team did affiliate with the U15 #2 Thunder, which allowed them to bring goalie Jenny Noskey onto the bench for the league final tournament. Hatch says she’ll make the trip to Strathmore as well, just in case.

Warman says sometimes girls’ hockey isn’t that competitive, but that is definitely not the case with the Thunder right now, and she hopes it continues.

“The last two years have been really good,” she says.