Beyond the Playbook: Cross-border hockey co-op gives Canadian girls Minnesota exposure<\/p>\n
Two Canadian teens are crossing the border every day to play high school hockey in Minnesota, building a unique bond with their team.<\/p>\n
Addie Brown and Lexi Wood go to school in Rainy River, Ontario, but they suit up for the Broncos when it\u2019s game time. Since 2018, a co-op between their school and International Falls has given Canadian players the chance to play high school hockey in Minnesota.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe travel about an hour and 15 every day after school for practice and then same thing for games,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
Brown says she was inspired to join by another Canadian player. \u201cThere was a girl before me by the name of Tirzah Carradice. She played from eighth grade to 12th grade, and I started playing in my 10th grade year, so I came with her when she was in 11th grade and she pushed me to come,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
Coach Bryan Kershaw said the girls\u2019 dedication is clear. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to make the choice or the decision to drive an hour and 15 minutes, an hour and 20 minutes every day through who knows what kind of weather on what kind of roads, you know they\u2019re dedicated right? You know they want to be there, so you don\u2019t ever have to worry that you\u2019re going to get their best effort because you know that hey, they made the effort to get there, they\u2019re coming for a purpose and a reason,\u201d Kershaw said.<\/p>\n
By teaming up with Rainy River, International Falls managed to keep its program alive and give these girls more exposure than they would get in Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a huge opportunity for us. There\u2019s not a whole lot of places for us to play in Canada for women\u2019s hockey, so it\u2019s definitely a great opportunity. At times you can kind of get like, you know mental blocks and think what am I doing? But yeah, it\u2019s pretty worth it,\u201d Wood said.<\/p>\n
Looking ahead and looking back<\/p>\n
Lexi has a few more years with the Broncos, but Addie is wrapping up her run. She said, \u201cit was probably one of the best choices, especially me going into a collegiate level, something next year, Minnesota hockey is where it\u2019s at, it\u2019s where the exposure\u2019s at, and I definitely do not regret coming to Minnesota.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since they don\u2019t get to spend time together at school, their teammates have found ways to include them off the ice, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe kind of we do a lot of team bonding type of things outside, and we make sure it\u2019s in time where they can come join us, like if they have something we\u2019ll wait until later, we\u2019ll plan it another day. But we always have team bonding stuff after our practices when they\u2019re here or whatever, so makes it a little easier,\u201d said Payten Rousseau, a senior captain and forward for the Broncos.<\/p>\n
It goes without saying that having Canadian players on the team is a big plus for the Minnesota side.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re always pretty dang good at hockey, so it\u2019s kind of useful having them on the team,\u201d said Rousseau.<\/p>\n
Brown and Wood helped the Broncos to a 5-17 regular season record, their highest win total since the 2018-19 season when they won nine games.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFor Related Stories:\u00a0Beyond the Playbook<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Canada<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0high school hockey<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0International Falls<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Liam Fellman<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beyond the Playbook: Cross-border hockey co-op gives Canadian girls Minnesota exposure Two Canadian teens are crossing the border…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[54103,19,7032,5,54104,54105],"class_list":{"0":"post-444304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-beyond-the-playbook","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-high-school-hockey","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-international-falls","13":"tag-liam-fellman"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116009714749637487","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}