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Raiders battle back for provincial bronze

A repeat trip to the provincial podium was in the cards for the Okotoks Ladies Raiders.
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Kylie Porter of the Okotoks Ladies Raiders battles with a Calgary Cardinal during the provincial bronze medal game.

A repeat trip to the provincial podium was in the cards for the Okotoks Ladies Raiders. Okotoks shook off the disappointment of missing out on the gold medal game by outlasting the host Calgary Cardinals 11-6 in the junior ladies provincial bronze match Sunday at Brentwood Arena. “We had a really tough day yesterday, it was really hard for us,” said Raider Ally Bymak. “Coming into this we expected a lot more from ourselves, the gold medal game was definitely our goal. “It was hard on a lot of girls, but it was the fact we knew we worked so hard this season to walk out of here with nothing in our hands. It came down to playing for each other.” The second seed in the four-team tournament, the Raiders had designs on a gold-medal match against the powerhouse Sherwood Park Titans. The Capital Region Saints stopped those plans in their tracks, pulling off a minor upset in a 12-8 victory over Okotoks in round-robin play. Okotoks then fell 17-9 to the Titans to finish with a 1-2 record and into a bronze medal match with the Cards. “All I did was ask them to focus,” said Raiders head coach Don Turner. “At the start of the season we wanted gold and we had the regular season to do it. “We had some bad bounces and ran into a hot goalie against the Saints and last night (versus the Titans) we were mentally let down. “We knew we were in a tough spot, but we re-focused.” Calgary didn’t make it easy in the third-place match. The Cardinals opened the scoring only to have Bymak find the hot-hand with a first-period natural hat-trick. Julia Porter, the province’s leading scorer with 92 points in the regular season, made it a 4-1 lead with a breakaway tally in the final minute of the first period. “The drive of the girls is insane,” Bymak added. “I knew they would push through to get the medal because that’s what we came here to do. “Sometimes those lulls are hard to get out of, but that’s one thing our team does really well at, getting that momentum back. We recognize that, turn it on and realize we’ve just got to finish this.” The Cards bounced back to start the middle frame on the powerplay and crawled back into a 5-5 score. Breanne Trotter and Kylie Porter added rally-killing goals late in the stanza to make it a 7-5 advantage. After Calgary cut the deficit to one, the Raiders responded with four unanswered through Trotter, Bymak, Julia Porter and Daely Keith to comfortably take the result. “We just asked them to play one focused shift at a time,” Turner said. “That’s all we had to do. We knew we had the talent, the skill, the legs and the horses, the spirit, that if we went shift by shift at the end of the game we will look up and be ahead.” Adding to the motivation for Okotoks was the fact it would be the final time their whole roster would be wearing the same uniform. Alternate captain Carmen Massel is aging out of the junior ranks, but the coach is hopeful to keep as much of the team – many of whom have been teammates since Peewee - as intact as possible. “We came in loosey, goosey, and we had to win some hardware, some girls are never going to play again so go win it for them,” Turner said. “There were girls that wanted to play, but were injured. They pooled their energy and came out loose. I want to keep this group together, it’s a real family atmosphere and that’s rare in this game.”


Remy Greer

About the Author: Remy Greer

Remy Greer is the assistant editor and sports reporter for westernwheel.ca and the Western Wheel newspaper. For story tips contact [email protected]
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