Ice hockey interprovincial coming to Baywest Mall
EP women to team up with KwaZulu-Natal players
The Eastern Province Ice Hockey Association announced yesterday it would host the South African Women’s interprovincial tournament for the very first time at Baywest Mall in August.
A Coastal Ladies team (combining Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal) will take on the best Western Province and Gauteng have to offer, providing fans with some exciting action on ice.
Tamsin Wentzel, of the EP Ice Hockey Association, said the ultimate aim of the tournament was to select players for the national team.
The event will be held over the Women’s Day weekend of August 9-11.
“The selectors will be around during the competition and will be watching all the [women] play,” Wentzel said yesterday.
“We will have a training session with all the [women] selected where they will be split into two All Stars teams [to] play against each other.
“That is normally how they select the South African team.”
She was pleased that SA Ice Hockey had finally given the thumbs-up to host the event.
“The ice rink has only been up since 2015,” Wentzel said.
“We had some people who had played hockey before and they started the Eastern Province Ice Hockey Association.“In the first year we produced our first South African [women’s] team member for the SA team. “So it was very exciting. “We have a great group of women who are playing and good coaches.
“We have been fighting to get the rights to host, because in 2016 it was held in Cape Town and our women went there to play.
“Last year, it was held in Johannesburg and our women played again.
“We said to SA Ice Hockey we wanted to host it this year. We are thankful that they agreed.
“We are confident that we can do a good job in hosting the event and are very excited to be a part of it.
“We really want to make it a big event, but we are desperately trying to find sponsorship and marketing to just get the word out there.”
Wentzel said many people in Port Elizabeth were not aware that there was even an ice rink in the city.
She said this event would also help market not only the sport but the ice rink as well.
“We want to invite school children and adults to come and watch the games, as entry to the event is free,” Wentzel said.
“At the moment there are not so many ice rinks in South Africa, so it’s only Gauteng, Western Province and Coastal Ladies who will take part in the event.
“The EP players have joined up with KwaZulu-Natal because we don’t have enough women to fill a team, so we have four KwaZulu-Natal women in our team as well.”
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