A Rimbey athlete is off to Markham, Ontario to compete in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League championship for the Clarkson Cup.
Camille Trautman, goalie for the Calgary Inferno Women’s Hockey Team said the team, who will compete in the tournament March 4 to 7, has a good chance to win.
“Right now we are tied with Montreal for second (in the league),” she said.
The CWHL is comprised of professional teams from Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Brampton and Boston and is the highest caliber of female hockey in North America.
Many of the women Olympic team members from Canada and the United States play on these teams during the years in-between the Olympics.
Trautman has played hockey since she was four-years-old and competed in the Rimbey minor hockey system until she was 13.
“I started playing goal when I was eight or nine years old,” she said. “I loved it, it was fun,” she said.
During her early teens she played major midget hockey in Red Deer and then spent three years playing with the Red Deer College Queens while she was enrolled in kinesiology at the college.
Now 22, Trautman is in her rookie year with Calgary Inferno and is ranked fourth goalie overall in the league.
However, she says she finds the drive to and from Calgary for games and practices several times a week to be stressful.
“This will be my last year. Hockey has been good to me, but it’s time to start something new in my life and move on. And I do want to be on the farm.”
Trautman also enjoys ball hockey, biking and quadding and would like to continue to play hockey at a recreational level.