Three Central Alberta players are preparing for the biggest challenge of their ringette lives.
Dailyn and Jamie Bell of Lacombe and Kelsie Caine of Red Deer will suit up with Canadian national teams for the World Ringette Championships Dec. 27 to Jan. 4 in Helsinki, Finland.
The Bell sisters, regular members of the Edmonton WAM of the National Ringette League, will play with the national senior team at the worlds, while Caine, also a WAM player, will join the national junior squad.
The senior team will take on the current world champion Finnish squad in a best-of-three series for the Sam Jacks Trophy, while Canada’s under-21 team will play in the President’s Pool of the junior worlds with teams from Sweden, Czech Republic, United States, Slovakia and Finland.
The junior gold- and bronze-medal winners be decided via best-of-three series. Finland is the defending world junior champion.
• The host U19AA Sting settled for fourth place in their division of the Central Alberta AA Ringette Association Ice Breaker tournament at Lacombe during the weekend.
The tournament attracted teams from throughout Alberta as well as Ontario and Manitoba.
The U19AA Sting went 2-1 in round-robin play, defeating the Zone 5 Grit 8-2 and the Eastman Flames of Manitoba 11-6 before falling 6-2 to the eventual division champion Calgary Blue.
Shae-Lyn Baxter sniped four goals in the win over the Grit, while Gillian Dreger scored twice. Dreger fired four goals, Kristen Demale had three and Baxter, MacKenna Causey, MacKenzie Lindholm and Breana Parent contributed singles against the Flames, and Dreger potted both goals in the loss to the Blue.
The Sting then fell 3-2 to the Edmonton Elite in the bronze-medal game, their goals coming from Dreger and Lindholm. Grace Romansky and Baylee Schulhauser shared Sting goaltending duties through the tournament.
Meanwhile, the U14AA Sting posted a 1-2 round-robin slate in their category, belting Zone 2 Big Country 12-3 and losing 8-7 and 5-2 to the Manitoba Wild and the Calgary White.
In their lone victory, the Sting got four goals from Carly Cherniak, three courtesy of Kate Roscoe, two from Sydney Schnoor and singles from Julia Dawes, Shaelynn Law and Hannah Murray.
Schnoor and Megan Grubb each scored twice against the Wild, with Leah Desilets, Kate Roscoe and Tory Towers also connecting, and Roscoe and Hanna Gill found the back of the net in the loss to Calgary White.
The Sting defeated the Edmonton Elite 6-4 in the fifth/sixth place game as Law netted two goals and Cherniak, Gill, Murray and Schnoor each scored once. Madison Kohut and Gracie Setters split goaltending duties for the Central Alberta squad.
Calgary Blue defeated Calgary White in the U14 final.