The Ste. Anne Jr. Aces are one of three brand new teams in the Hanover Tache Junior Hockey League (HTJHL)
Ste. Anne Aces were officially added to the league, along with the Grunthal Red Wings and Mitchell Mustangs, at the (HTJHL) meeting last week.
Miranda Lanouette is the general manager for the Ste. Anne Jr. Aces.
She says the team started talking about possibly joining the league in spring of this year with some of their U18 players that were aging out.
“We were talking about how cool it would be for those guys to be able to stay in our community and then eventually, hopefully moving on into our senior program. And then all of a sudden it just was like, wait a minute, we could actually do this.”
So then they met up with the league, and they were super excited about it as well, so they got signed up.
Lanouette says it’s so important to have a place for local kids to play high level competitive hockey.
“Also giving the minor hockey kids some aspiration, and being able to come and watch maybe even some other older siblings play, that's really cool for us.”
She says it was surprising how many people in their community were playing abroad or in other communities.
Lanouette informs that luckily, the teams many of the locals were playing for gave the players releases so they could come home to play for the Ste. Anne Jr. Aces.
“Our roster is looking really good, it's looking healthy, and we're very excited to get started.”
She says its great to see players coming back home to play.
“You have school friends and family and grandparents that don't have to go outside of the community to watch them play, it feels awesome,” she says. “It's very exciting for the rest of the community, teachers and previous coaches, to get a feeling of what they're like now, and I think that's great for everybody involved.”
The Ste. Anne Aces have their first exhibition game in the HTJHL on September 29th at 3:30pm in Landmark against the Grunthal Red Wings.
The regular season schedule is being worked and should be released shortly.
There's a very special event coming up in the HTJHL. A showcase is going to be taking place at the Niverville CRRC on October 20th.
The Ste. Anne Aces play against Landmark at 10:00am as the first game of the event.
“We're very excited to have this. There is a lot of work that went into it, and Niverville was very, very instrumental in making that happen.”
With files from Dave Anthony