Ice Hawks continue to soar in Owen Sound
It's been another banner year for the Owen Sound Ice Hawks.
The city's girl's minor hockey group grew from 12 teams to 14 teams this past season.
Registration jumped to surpass 200 players for the first time, ending at about 210. Last year the Ice Hawks had about 190 players. For the 2024-25 season, executives are planning for 240 players and 17 teams.
“This is huge for us, but definitely a challenge as we need to find more ice time, sponsors, volunteers, etcetera to support the growth,” said Ice Hawks President Jeremy Mccoubrey. “We've also needed to stay ahead of the program from an organizational perspective and we've been rebuilding the structure from the ground up in terms of policies, programs, executive Part of that is to just make sure we're delivering the programming players want, but part of it is also to build the foundation for future so that we can manage the growth to 20 or 25 teams in future.”
The Ice Hawks expect to have three teams at every age level next season and could see four teams at the under-9 level, which would be a first at any level of the program.
This future is bright, and this past season was full of highlights for the Ice Hawks.
The program iced three under-9 teams for the first time and achieved a record registration for its under-7 initiation program, which is a promising sign for the future with a strong turnout of players coming into the sport.
The OSGH Northern Lights tournament was back for the second consecutive year since a hiatus during the COVID -19 pandemic. This year the tournament hosted a record 22 teams.
The Owen Sound Hopper Real Estate Ice Hawks under-11bb squad won the OWHL Southern League - - a first in OSGH history. “We never had a team qualify for the league championship weekend and this year we had two (U18BB Owen Sound Glass being the other). We had the fire trucks roll through town last Saturday when Ice Hawks returned with their championship banner,” Mccoubrey said.
The Owen Sound Andpet Realty Ice Hawks under-13c won the WOAA League championship.
A record six teams participated in provincials for the Ice Hawks this year. The Owen Sound Hopper Real Estate Ice Hawks U11BB team made it to the quarterfinal. Other teams to earn provincial runs included the Owen Sound Hometown Sports Ice Hawks under-9c team. The Owen Sound Chrysler Ice Hawks under-13a team, the Owen Sound Andpet Realty Ice Hawks under-13c club, the Owen Sound Bayshore Country Feeds Ice Hawks under-15a team and the Owen Sound Mcarthur Tire Ice Hawks under-18b team.
The Ice Hawks added an under-22 senior team for the first time in the program's history.
The under-22 team consisted largely of graduating players from the Ice Hawks under-18 program last year and played part-time with exhibition games and tournaments. The team is planning to enter a formal league schedule next year.
The Ice Hawks featured heavily at Owen Sound's Hockeyfest this year.
“Dollee Meigs and the University Waterloo Warriors program have really become a special part of girls' hockey in Owen Sound and that weekend was a pretty unique way to expose our young players (and the community) to elite level female hockey,” Mccoubrey said. "The whole thing sort of evolved into the Santa Claus parade weekend and having the Warriors players join the parade with our OSGH Players turned out to be a really unique event.
Meigs is helping the Ice Hawks run pre-tryout clinics and will help with the program's tryouts in the coming days.
“We're working at ways to connect her program with our A-level teams for next season and she'll also be back in August to run her local camps. We just met with the city and University of Waterloo this week about Hockeyfest 2024, which we're hoping will be back on parade weekend in November,” Mccoubrey said.
The University of Waterloo is hosting the Usports women's hockey national championship next season.
Mccoubrey said the Ice Hawks are excited to welcome non-parent female coaches next year for its top-level teams. Kate Gilkinson will coach the under-15a team and Shawna Wren will coach the under-18a squad.
“It has been the goal of the association to attract more female and non-parent coaches and having these experienced coaches step in for these teams will have a big impact on their players and the program as a whole,” he said.
Gilkinson and Wren are helping the Ice Hawks develop a model for a High-performance Program in Owen Sound that will take OSGH teams and player development to the next level, Mccoubrey said.
The 2025 season will be the Ice Hawks' 30th anniversary year and the organization is building up to celebrate former teams and players.
Owen Sound Girls Hockey was founded in 1995 to support the first girls' hockey team in Owen Sound.
At this time there was one “Intermediate” (U19) team which was comprised of players aged 8 to 18 years old. This was typical for teams in the area. Coaches would match lines to ensure players were paired with similar competition within each game.
As new players joined, that first team became two teams with narrower age levels although each team continued to play under their sponsors' name with no overall association “name” or logo.
This changed in 2001 when the Intermediate players were allowed to select a team name for the following season - and the Ice Hawks were born.
The 2002 season featured the original four Ice Hawks teams at atom (U9), peewee (U12), bantam (U14) and intermediate (U19). That year also secured the first-ever provincial medal for OSGH with a silver at Intermediate “C”.