Girl power in the world’s largest minor hockey tournament

World record breaking tournament

Calgary, Canada has a lot of young hockey players. In a city of around 1.24 million people, over 13,000 participate in the sport across 24 associations, making Hockey Calgary one of the biggest and fastest growing hockey organizations in North America. Many of them come together annually to play their favourite game over a week in January, a ritual that has been going uninterrupted for 36 years. Commonly known by its major sponsor, the Esso Minor Hockey Week attracted around 650 teams and 11,000 players this year between the ages of 7-21. With numbers like that, it may not come as any surprise to learn The Guinness Book of Records ranks it as the biggest minor hockey tournament in the world.

Calgary Girls Hockey

Calgary Girls Hockey (CGH) is one of the city’s associations and has over 600 players ranging from the earliest years of Timbits (age 7-8) through to Midget (18). At the Bantam level (13-14), three teams played against one another in early rounds of “Esso” leading to the final yesterday at Max Bell Arena. The first period saw both teams defending well and no goals resulted. In the second period, the White Hawks got two goals in quick succession and then held on to their lead for the remainder of the game.

Congratulations Bantam 1 White Hawks and to all the other teams that played in the 2017 Esso Minor Hockey Week tournament.