Music City U.S.A. didn’t present many high notes for a Whitehorse women’s hockey team — at least in terms of wins.
The Gold Diggers went winless with three close losses at the Weekend Hockey Tournaments in Nashville, Tenn., April 7-9.
“We still had a good time,” said Gold Diggers captain Jessica Nadeau. “In our opinion we were probably put in the wrong division and we did talk to the organizers about that.
“I think these teams were a lot stronger than we were, so I think we did very good — the scores were quite close.”
The Gold Diggers took three narrow losses — all to other Canadian teams, oddly enough — in the tournament’s C division.
Whitehorse opened with a 1-0 loss to Captain’s Finest from New Brunswick. They then fell 2-0 to the Pond Girls from Ontario. The Gold Diggers finished their run with a 1-0 loss to Quebec’s Les Rebelles de Maniwaki.
Defenceman Vanessa Bogaert, winger Helen Christiansen and goalie Stacey Bowden each picked up Player of the Game awards for the Gold Diggers.
The Gold Diggers team was mostly assembled from players in the Whitehorse Women’s Hockey League.
“We had quite a few beginner players on our team,” said Nadeau. “We just put a team together with whoever is available to travel and wants to play. We basically didn’t play together until we got to the tournament.”
The Gold Diggers’ run in Nashville was a week after two Yukon women’s teams won divisions at the Banff Cup in Alberta. Yukon Gold won senior A and Team Yukon won senior B with undefeated runs at the tournament.
Like with Team Yukon in Banff, Yukon Brewing sent the Gold Diggers down with plenty of barley pops to give out to other teams. Though they didn’t win a game, they might have taken a popularity award, had one existed.
“That was really nice of them and every team loves getting Yukon beer and is always happy to play against us,” said Nadeau.
The Nashville tourney was organized by Weekend Hockey Tournaments, a company based in Ontario that holds recreational tournaments throughout North America. They may not have seen the last of the Gold Diggers.
“They were a great organizer to co-ordinate with,” said Nadeau.
“We like to do different tournaments, so we’ll probably do a another tournament next year, but at a different location,” she added.
Contact Tom Patrick at tomp@yukon-news.com