Team Eastern Door and the North select rosters

With the National Aboriginal Hockey Championship (NAHC) in Kamloops, British Columbia, only a few months away, Team Eastern Door and the North (EDN) have now publicized their teams.

Team EDN held their final selection camps at the Kahnawake Sports Complex at the end of January. Players who made the teams were made aware prior to this week’s publication.

Seven players from Kahnawake will represent Team EDN in Kamloops in May - four boys and three girls. On the boys’ team, goaltender Pryor Stacey will be joined by Ioteseronties Marcus Diabo, Camden Jackson, and Rohsennakehte Lahache.

For the girls, they too will have a Kahnawa’kehró:non goaltender, as Hayse Horne made the team. She will be joined by last year’s captain Ryan Stacey and Waheshon Curotte.

Ross Leclaire, who coaches the girls’ team, said that while he does not have any specific expectations for the tournament, he feels as though this year’s team is one of an especially strong calibre.

“It’s difficult to say at exactly what level we’re at right now. Competitiveness will always be one of our biggest challenges, since we are pulling together a team on short notice and trying to get them to play as a team, but it’s definitely a higher calibre than it has been over the past few years,” said Leclaire.

The teams will hold a pre-tournament practice, after the regular season of the various leagues they have pulled players from will be finished to try and build chemistry and get them prepared for Kamloops.

Leclaire said that the girls’ team is very young, especially when compared to the other teams in the tournament.

Kwaronienhawi Jacobs, who manages the girls’ EDN team, said that the reason for that is to try and create continuity on the team, with players coming back year after year to create a core - something she saw for herself when she was a player for the team from 2003 to 2008.

“That’s how it was like when I was playing. We had a core group of girls who played together for a very long time, and they moved up further and further in three years and losing one or two here and there, but still gaining another one that has just as much talent, and continuing to create a team,” said Jacobs.

“We want to create a team that’s young and we can move together for the next few years. You’re going to see them grow each year and get better and better.”

Jacobs said that for the returning players, they can already see that growth since last year.

Team EDN is mostly made up of U15 players, and with this being a U18 tournament, it can be intimidating for newer players, according to Jacobs.

“But at the same time, it shows them what they’re capable of, and it makes them strive for next year, to come back even better,” she said.

Another factor for the calibre of the team according to Jacobs is having the tryouts be in Kahnawake, as well as a growth in popularity of women’s hockey in the last few years. She said that compared to prior years, the tryouts had a lot more players this time around.

“I think it’s nice to see that girls are more interested in playing again, because while it was not necessarily going down, it had not really been growing for a while,” said Jacobs.

The full rosters are available on EDN’s website at pen-edn.com.

[email protected]