It's been an incredible season for Boissevain's Gracie Glover, goaltender for the U of A Pandas, who was named Goaltender of the Year for CanWest, helped her team claim the division title, and now is gearing up for Nationals.
Being introduced as Goaltender of the Year is something Glover admits takes a little getting used to. "Yeah, it sounds pretty good," Glover says with a big smile and chuckle. "My teammates were saying congratulations but it still doesn't feel real. I'm pretty honoured."
Overall, Glover says it's been a year of growth for her personally and the Pandas. "At the start of the year, we had a rotation going. We graduated a six-year goalie last year, so we had three fresh goalies coming in this year. Starting at the beginning, they let us all get our chance and see how we'd develop throughout the year. In the second half after Christmas, we started rotating two of us and later on in the year, they went with what was working."
What was working was Gracie Glover.
After grabbing the reins as the number one netminder, Glover says the most rewarding was earning her teams' trust. "I mean, it's amazing. They push me every day in practice to be better. It goes both ways, they've helped build my trust in them in front of me. They're an amazing group."
Coming off being named Goaltender of the Year for CanWest, Glover and her squad continued the good times in their latest round of games. "We just got back from Vancouver, we were playing the University of British Columbia in the CanWest Final. Last weekend, we beat Mount Royal University, we went to game three and we beat them in overtime to book our ticket to Nationals. This past weekend, we swept them, both games went to overtime and we came home with the CanWest title."
Being a long-time goalie and a very successful one with some huge wins, Glover says that it can be a little intimidating when the team storms off the bench and rushes the goalie, but this past weekend was not as scary because of the circumstance.
"Yeah, yeah for sure, it can be intimidating," Glover says with laugh, surely reliving times she's been bowled over by rushing teammates in the past. "I guess the nature of how it went, we scored in overtime, so everyone went to the goal scorer. We then kind of migrated to the middle. It wasn't that big dog pile like it can be."
Watching the game-winning goal from 200 feet away, Glover recalls what she was thinking. "I just remember going 'oh my gosh, oh my gosh, it's in, it's in', then I just started skating as fast as I could to the other end. It's a pretty exciting time and I can't put it into words, honestly."
Heading into Nationals, Glover is confident the team can make some noise. "I think we're feeling really good about how things have been going lately," she said proudly. "There's four divisions, each division will have two teams there. They rank the teams, so the eight teams that are there, they do the championship teams 1-4, then the second place teams 5-8. I think we'll be ranked 1st or 2nd, depending on how the finals of the other leagues go, so that's what it's looking like so far."
With women's hockey continuing to get more attention, Glover is thrilled to have scouts watching and know that professional hockey is a legitimate future. "It's incredible that women's sports are being supported now. I think it's awesome to see. There was a PWHL game in Edmonton and a couple of us got to go. It was amazing to see the young girls have something like that to look up to, they can see themselves at that level of success. It's special."
For a competitor like Glover who continues to find new levels to her game every day, she says she couldn't do any of it without the support around her. "I have to thank all the people that have gotten me here. It's a really exciting feeling knowing there's a potential for that next step once school is over."
Being from Boissevain, there's a chance that one day a billboard of Gracie Glover greets people as they come into town, something she's never thought about but does have an idea to make it even more special.
"Yeah, that would be pretty cool," she says again with her trademark laugh. "When I was younger actually, I think I was four or five, we had a Canada Day parade and there's a picture of me with a Canada shirt that was on a banner that was up for when people came into town. I think it would be pretty awesome to recreate that now."
The U of A Pandas leave for Nationals March 18th.