Games in PyeongChang, Korea on Feb. 11 against a team called Olympic Athletes from Russia.
Although PyeongChang will be her first Olympic Games, Bram is a five-year veteran with Canada’ s Senior National Team and has both speed and a gifted scoring touch that will undoubtedly help Canada in its quest for gold in PyeongChang.
For Larocque, the first Metis player on Canada’ s Olympic women’ s hockey team, hockey has pretty much been her life.“ I started to play hockey when I was six in Ste. Anne,” she said.“ At the time, I didn’ t even know there was women’ s hockey. I started playing with the boys and I played boys hockey until I was 12. Then I gave up the game for two years and played ringette.
“ I came back to hockey at 14 and played with both the boys and the girls and then at 16, I moved to Calgary.” It was quite a decision for a teenaged girl to leave friends, family, home and high school behind and head to Calgary to play hockey, but Larocque wanted to get to the Olympics and what better way to accomplish that feat than move to the hub of Olympic hockey in Canada.
From 2002-04, Larocque had played both boys hockey and girls basketball at Lorette Collegiate. In 2003-04, she became the first girl to play in the Winnipeg High School Boys Hockey League.
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THE TRIO WILL BE ON THE ICE IN PYEONGCHANG, KOREA FEBRUARY 11 TH AGAINST RUSSIA
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In 2005, however, she decided to move to Calgary to play for the professional women’ s team, the Calgary Oval X-Treme.
“ I made the decision to go and it was a big step but I played on teams with Hayley Wickenheiser and Cassie Campbell and what better way to develop as an athlete than to do that,” Larocque said.“ Playing with the X-Treme taught me everything. Most importantly, what I needed to do to play at the Olympic level.
“ I learned pretty early from Hayley and Cassie and the rest of my teammates that I had to get into better shape. I learned how to lift weights and I learned the importance of off-ice training and why it was as important or even more important than just playing the game.”
Lorette Collegiate went out of its way to help Larocque finish high school and even though she was playing hockey in Calgary, she still graduated from Lorette. In 2006, she helped Canada’ s national Under-22 team win gold at the MLP Nations Cup and in the fall of 2007 she accepted a scholarship to the University of Minnesota-Duluth and started playing for the Bulldogs. Her NCAA career was outstanding.
She played her first college game in October of 2007 and just got better and better each season and by 2010- 11, she was one of the most decorated players in NCAA women’ s hockey. The 5-foot- 6, 138-pound defenseman was the WCHA outstanding student-athlete of the year, the WCHA’ s defensive player of the year, a first-team All- WCHA selection and a first team All-American. She was also nominated for the 2011 Patty Kazmaier Award as the NCAA’ s female player of the year. Most importantly, she got her degree in accounting.
Not surprisingly, during her career at UMD, she also played for Team Canada. She won silver at the 2009 Canada Cup, gold at the 2010 Four Nations Cup, silver at the 2011 World Championship and Gold at the 2012 World Championship. But on Nov. 27, 2009, she was cut from Canada’ s 2010 Olympic team and vowed she would never let that happen again.
She hasn’ t. Since being centralized back in May, our women’ s national team has competed in several pre-Olympic games and tournaments, most recently a series of six matches against the United States.
Four Manitoba women were named to the centralized 28-player roster and have been fighting for their chance to help Canada’ s women’ s national team in their quest for Olympic gold in 2018. However, 22- year old defenseman Halli Krzyzaniak of Neepawa, Man., was also named to the centralized roster but will not be joining Canada’ s Olympic team this time around.
In the last decade, a strong American team has been victorious in the majority of their match-ups against Canada, but Canada’ s women have had the upper hand in 2017. Despite having won just two of the last ten World Championships, the Canadian team has looked unstoppable on the Olympic stage over the years, and are looking to clinch their fifth consecutive Olympic title in PyeongChang.
In fact, Canada is expected to face the United States in the Gold Medal game once again with Finland and Sweden considered contenders.
Not only will defending Olympic gold-medalist Larocque be joined in PyeongChang by firsttime Olympians Bram and Lacquette, she will also be on a team with assistant coach Dwayne Gylywoychuk of Winnipeg. ❍
106 | GAME ON | REGULAR SEASON EDITION 2018