Westwood Junior High School hockey team hosts Parisian club in St-Lazare

Hockey history was made in Saint-Lazare as the Westwood Wildcats, in its inaugural season, hosted for the first time a team from France.

The Wildcats faced-off against Paris 2003, a team who have already toured across Europe, including Russia.

Paris 2003 president, Matteo Grassi, said tours are an essential way of building the team.

“In France it’s hard to get an idea where you are, where the benchmark is,” Grassi said. “Canada and Russia, those are the benchmark for hockey in the world.”

According to Grassi, there is room for the game to grow in France.

“I think it’s grown a lot recently, and I think it’s going to grow even more because we’re doing the World Cup there,” he said.

For the Westwood Wildcats, Monday’s game was an opportunity to get out on the rink and have fun.

The new hockey team prides itself on being an equal opportunity club.

Westwood Junior High School principal, Marie-Josée Coiteux, said young adults, male or female, of all skill levels are welcomed.

“Just opening up our Saint-Lazare community to a group from Paris is just very exciting,” she said.

But Parisians, like Matthias Charlet, came to Canada looking for competition.

“We’re expecting to win, we’re really ready to win this game,” Charlet said.

And win they did after beating Westwood 7-0, which left Wildcat head coach Martin Gascon impressed.

“They were very skilled, very fast, very dedicated at playing the game,” he said.

But Gascon isn’t too discouraged by the loss.

“This is really a program to help individual hockey players to get better, it’s not a collective program built to win and to compete at a high level,” hesaid.

Lose or win, the Wildcats hope to possibly host the Parisian team again next year.