2010-11 National Women's Team

Tessa Bonhomme, a 2010 Olympic Winter Games gold medallist and member of Canada’s National Women’s Team for the 2010 4 Nations Cup, gives HockeyCanada.ca her point-of-view from St. John’s and Clarenville, N.L.

Saturday, November 6, 1010

A lot has gone on since my last blog, but all fun things of course! On Friday evening, we had a welcome reception at the hotel, where we were greeted by St. John’s Mayor Dennis O'Keefe, and representatives from Hockey Newfoundland and Labrador. We had a great time hanging out and chatting with a couple of young girls’ hockey teams that were there for the reception with their parents. I'm not sure who was more excited to be there, us or them!

A funny thing happened at this reception to one of our French players, Annie Guay, who was born and raised in Rouyn-Noranda, Que. Now, usually when young French players begin in our program, their English is very limited. Players like Danielle Goyette, Charline Labonté, Caroline Ouellette and Marie-Philip Poulin have learned the English language by playing hockey with Team Canada. Now as you can imagine, at first it’s a little tough to understand some of the sentences they put together, mainly because they have such strong French accents. The Anglophone players feel badly that we can’t always understand what they are saying, but it is also very frustrating for the Francophones on the team because we rarely understand what is going on in their conversations. Well, Miss. Annie Guay got to see what it was like from our point of view. At the reception, she sat at a table with Clarenville Mayor Fred Best, and began a conversation with one of the table members. It only took one sentence before Annie realized she had no idea what this man was saying. His Newfoundland accent was thick, and to her it seemed liked he was talking very fast. The table had to repeat the sentence approximately six times before she figured out they were asking her if she was excited for our game in Clarenville! It’s truly amazing how many different dialects and accents there are across Canada, let alone that we have two official languages – how great is that? What an amazingly diverse country we have!

The past couple of days in St John's have been anything but warm, sadly. Thankfully, we just got a really warm and comfy jacket from Nike. But on Saturday morning, we awoke to rays of sun shining through our window! All of us at some point or another decided to head outside for some fresh air and a little bit of window shopping. The majority of us hit the town in our Nike jackets and winter hats, only to take them off three steps out the hotel’s front door. I can honestly say I had sweat dripping down my face as I walked down Duckworth Street! As we strolled by the water, we noticed that almost every person here owns a dog. I'm not sure if there was a dog park nearby, but I felt like with every couple of steps, I was tempted to stop and pet a puppy!  

It wasn't long until we had to return to the hotel to get ready for our last practice before our exhibition game. Again, practice was a lot of fun and had a very high tempo! Once practice was over, we had a quick flood and returned to the ice for five-on-five, half-ice games with young girls from all across Newfoundland and Labrador. Now, I was on Team Red and I don't want to sound biased, BUT we were pretty much an All-Star team! The young goalie in net for us is definitely a year or two away from making Team Canada! She had a shutout up until the last couple of minutes, when Annie Guay ripped a snap shot by her blocker side. Not to be out done by Guay, Hayley Wickenheiser returned the favour by taking a slap shot from the hash marks, whizzing the puck passed a frightened Gillian Apps, who had replaced Shannon Szabados and was manning the posts at the time. Talk about competitive! This may sound a little crazy to you all, and that’s because IT IS!  We were playing with Atom and Peewee aged players out there, and the Stanley Cup was nowhere to be found, but we were still taking these games pretty seriously. I guess that’s why we are athletes; we’re unbelievably competitive and do everything we can to win! 

The Team Canada girls who over-achieved during the five-on-five games ended up being fined for showing off, and the money collected will go towards prostate cancer research, seeing how it is MOVEMBER!  I hope everyone is growing a mustache and raising money for a great cause!

Cheers to you all!

Chat soon,

Tess

Twitter: @tessab25
Facebook: Tessa Bonhomme