Submitted by Sean Grassie
Even before the opening faceoff of the 2007 World Women’s Hockey Championship, the city was impacted by the event. In February of 2007, two months before the tournament, the Nine Nations Female Peewee Hockey Festival was held at Selkirk Recreation Complex and Selkirk Memorial Arena. The one-day festival was presented by Hockey Manitoba and the host committee of the world championship. Each participant was assigned to play on one of nine teams, named for the nine countries that were represented in the championship.
The United States, China and Kazakhstan formed one group at the world championship, and their preliminary-round games were all played at Selkirk Recreation Complex. More than 4,000 fans in total attended the three games.
All other games in the tournament were played at MTS Centre in Winnipeg. The event had a total attendance of 122,152, breaking the tournament record of 94,000 set at the 2004 championship in Halifax and Dartmouth.
“Our goal was to get over 100,000,” said Greg Paseshnik, event manager for the tournament. “To get over 122,000 was phenomenal for us.”
The three Manitobans on Team Canada’s roster were forward Jennifer Botterill, defenceman Delaney Collins and goalie Sami Jo Small. Canada beat the U.S. 5-1 in the gold-medal game. Collins was named to the tournament All-Star Team.
“I would say that she was before her time,” Small said of the five-foot-four Collins, who was named the 2007 Manitoba Female Athlete of the Year by the Manitoba Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association.
“She played at a time when she was so incredibly skilled and so quick and deft with the puck and had that ability to make that first pass breakout every time on the stick. In her era, the majority of the defencemen were putting it high and hard off the glass without the intention of starting that breakout. She, I think, saw the game like a coach would see it, and that’s I think why she’s so successful now as a coach.”
Botterill won three Olympic gold medals and one silver during her career.
“She had a great skating background with her mom (Doreen Botterill) being an Olympic speed skater,” Small said. “However, she made it look effortless and so you never really knew the speed that she was going.”
Small called the 2007 tournament in Winnipeg and Selkirk “a huge transformation for the province to see so many people be so gravitated” to the women’s game.
