Fred Sasakamoose ‘Chief Thunderstick’ National Hockey Championship adds women’s division for first time
A event that highlights the Indigenous expertise enjoying hockey welcomed a girls’s division for the the primary time within the competitors’s historical past.
Ten hockey groups competed within the girls’s division whereas 40 groups competed within the males’s division of this yr’s Fred Sasakamoose “Chief Thunderstick” Nationwide Hockey Championship in Saskatoon over the weekend.
Within the girls’s division, the Mistawasis Sagestrong took house the highest prize, beating the Cross Lake Girl Islanders 4-3 to change into the event’s first-ever girls’s champions.
Among the many workforce’s gamers was Brigette Lacquette of the Cote First Nation.
She was the primary First Nations girl to play hockey for Group Canada, profitable silver as of the 2018 Olympic workforce.
Lacquette performed within the males’s divison of the event in earlier years, and stated it was a privilege to get on the market amongst different Indigneous girls.
“It’s superior to see the event of ladies’s hockey that has occurred within the final 5, 10 years,” Lacquette stated.
“You already know, it is undoubtedly getting quicker and extra expert. It was superior to be on the ice and to play hockey.”
The event is the dream-made-reality of Fred Sasakamoose of Ahtahkakoop First Nation.
His aim was to sometime have an Indigenous workforce compete on the Olympics.
When Sasakamoose suited up for the Chicago Blackhawks within the Nineteen Fifties, he was the primary treaty Indigenous participant within the NHL.
He served as an inspiration for Indigenous kids and was inducted into the Saskatchewan Sports activities Corridor of Fame in 2007, and have become a member of the Order of Canada in 2018.
Final week a brand new statue of Sasakamoose was unveiled in entrance of SaskTel Centre in Saskatoon.
Marty Ross, the coach of the Canoe Lake Younger Weapons, stated it is a good factor to have a event that options Indigenous gamers.
“It is crucial for our group. It is one factor we sort of work in any respect yr,” Ross stated.
“We enter in different tournaments to simply attempt to groom ourselves and to prepare for the large one. That is the one which issues to us.”
The workforce gained the final version of the lads’s event and positioned because the runner-ups this yr.
