The UNB Varsity Reds women’s hockey team is gearing up to return to the ice next season for the first time in a decade, and with coaches already in place, players are officially coming onboard.
17-year old forward Paige Grenier from Olds, Alta., is the first player to officially sign a U SPORTS Letter of Intent to join the team when it’s officially back in action starting in the fall of 2018.
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Grenier is entering Grade 12 at Olds High School and was drawn to UNB when she found out recently that head coach Sarah Hilworth would be coaching the team.
Grenier is the captain of the Red Deer Midget AAA chiefs of the Alberta Female Hockey League. She was also a member of the gold medal winning women’s hockey team at the Alberta Winter Games in 2014 and was on Alberta’s U16 team during the 2015-2015 season and is looking to make the province U18 squad this season. Grenier said she worked with Hilworth for Team Alberta events and other clinics and camps.
She was also a member of the gold medal-winning women’s hockey team at the Alberta Winter Games in 2014 and was on Alberta’s U16 team during the 2015-2016 season, and is looking to make the province’s U18 squad this season.
Grenier said she worked with Hilworth for Team Alberta events and other clinics and camps.
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“It’s a bit of a leap of faith, but again, I know Sarah pretty well, got to know her when she was head coach of the Olds Broncos team and now moving forward, I have full confidence coming out here that we’ll put together a team that will be competitive,” Grenier said.
Hilworth said Grenier already has leadership skills and will be an asset to the team, adding that it’s great to be able to send out offer letters and have players sign letters of intent to move things forward.
“This is the real deal now. This is a little bit more ink to paper, and for us to actually have those building blocks,” Hilworth said.
UNB director of athletics John Richard said things are progressing well.
“Sarah’s been extremely busy, every two or three days I’m meeting with a potential recruit and we’ve had a lot of student athletes in… Sept. 1 kind of marks the beginning of that when you can sign an LOI for the next year so I think we’ll start signing more and more here as the weeks go on,” Richard said.
He said a letter of intent basically tells the rest of the country that the student is already committed to a university.
The university downgraded the varsity team to a sports club in 2008, citing funding issues, but after a complaint from former player Sylvia Dooley, the province’s Labour and Employment Board ruled last March that the university discriminated on the basis of sex and ordered the team’s reinstatement to varsity status.
“The university is all in and they made a serious commitment to this program to do it the right way and compete at a national level and at the same level a lot of our other programs compete at and obviously, Sarah has been able to sell that and those student athletes are buying into that,” Richard said.
In a phone interview on Friday, Dooley told Global News that to see the pieces fall into place is exciting as the team will be ready to compete next year.
“It’s been quite a long time but to be working together now towards a common goal… to see that team succeed, so after quite an ordeal, it’s really refreshing to be on the same page again and being able to work towards a positive goal,” Dooley said.
While she won’t be heading back to play another year, she said she plans on being involved as alumni and wants to help re-engage people with the program.
Hilworth said alumni will be an important component and said she’s happy to have Dooley and other former athletes involved.