Warm spring weather is finally here and with it, comes ball and soccer season! However, some local girls haven’t put away their ice skates just yet. We caught up with Blair Wingert today, head coach of the the Xcel AAA, all girls, spring hockey team.

“We are a U14, spring hockey team through the Xcel program out of Saskatoon,” explains Wingert, adding, “We have 6 girls from the West Central area on our team. One from Outlook, one from Wilkie, two from Eston and two from Rosetown”.

To prepare for these busy tournament weekends, the team has been putting in long Saturdays.

“Because we pull girls from all over the area, we try to keep our training down to one day. On Saturdays we hold two on-ice sessions, hockey IQ and off-ice training. We also utilize Serious Academy of hockey to do a lot of our skill development.”

The girls have travelled to Edmonton and Calgary for tournaments so far this season. This weekend they are heading to Winnipeg to compete in the North American Female Hockey Challenge. Wingert describes this as the largest female spring hockey tournament in Western Canada. He expects to see teams coming from as far as the United States, and all over Canada including Vancouver and Ontario.

“We are in tough this year, as we are a young team. Most of the girls are born in 2005 and we are competing, for the most part, against girls born in 2004. The big focus for this year is development and growth, which we have seen.”

Wingert credits the teams success on surrounding himself with great people. He enlisted coaching help from Rosetown local, Kendall McFaull. McFaull is the former captain of the UofS Huskies men's hockey team. He has just recently returned from playing hockey for the British Elite Hockey League out of Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Female UofS Huskies hockey player, Courtney Cormack lends her knowledge of the game as second assistant captain and rounding out the coaching staff is Russ Goodman. Goodman is a former AAA Rosetown Redwings player and is assistant coach of this years UofS men's Huskies hockey team.

The Xcel takes on the Saskatoon Huskie propects in game one in Winnipeg.