The Olds College Broncos female hockey team has a lot of positive things to build on as they look toward next season, head coach Chris Leeming says.
The No. 4-ranked Broncos were swept by the No. 1-ranked Grant MacEwan University Griffins in a best-of-three playoff series this past week.
They were beaten 5-0 Thursday in Edmonton and Saturday at the Olds Sportsplex.
However, they can hold their heads high, having accomplished a lot in the program's short three-year history, Leeming says.
"They were able to make history this year actually. They got the most wins they've ever had, the most points and their first playoff appearance," he notes.
They compiled six wins.
Next season's squad will look a lot different from this one.
Leeming figures they'll lose about eight players.
"We're losing our three leaders who've been here since Day 1, so that's a pretty significant loss to our program," he says.
"We've done some leadership development this year to prepare for that because we're losing our whole leadership core."
Olds College suffers to some degree compared to other schools because many of its programs are only two years long. Coaches get players familiar with their system, etc., then they get one good season under their belts – and they're gone.
Leeming has developed a recruitment strategy to try to get around that problem.
"Part of my focus for recruitment this year was to go out and get ag girls -- like farm girls -- and I've got three of them so far. What that allows them to do is stay for three or four years, because they can do bachelor of applied science for agri-business," he says.
"It was important for us to go out and recruit good people, not just good athletes, because we need to make sure we have a strong core group of girls here to make sure we're doing all the right things on the ice and off the ice to be successful."
Leeming says offence will be a focus for him in the off-season.
"We're losing two of our top scorers," he says.
"That's something that we need to address, so I'm trying to balance it out throughout the lines and get players who at least can score at their own level, because to a certain degree, that translates to the next level. If you're able to score you can score, right?
"If you've got an offensive mentality, regardless of what level you're playing at, you're going to have that same mentality.
"We've got a couple of girls who I feel are going to be able to contribute to that and rather than having just one or two girls to rely on for scoring, I'm hoping that we can have it kind of spread out across four lines now," he says.
Leeming was only hired this past August, after former head coach Sarah Hillworth left in June to rebuild the University of New Brunswick program.
"It'll be interesting, because I mean, I was more or less handed this team. I didn't have any say in the recruiting, who the players were who were brought in, so it'll be a new season next year with pretty significant turnover," he says.
He notes at the beginning of the season he didn't know any of the girls on the team.
"It was important to develop relationships with them and kind of talk with them; just outside of hockey too, right? Just non-hockey-related conversation, because they're on the ice enough; they know what's expected of them," Leeming says.
He says getting to know the players individually and understanding their character is key to improving play.
"If there's a mutual respect there, I think that people are willing to work a lot harder and buy into the system, the team approach and all the goals that we all have as a shared group."
"They were able to make history this year actually. They got the most wins they've ever had, the most points and their first playoff appearance."
CHRIS LEEMING
HEAD COACH
OLDS BRONCOS FEMALE HOCKEY TEAM
