KAMLOOPS — All involved with the Women’s World Hockey Championship are calling the tournament a major success – with the possible exception of the Canadian team that came up short in the final.
After being defeated by their rivals to the south, the Canadian women are heading home.
“I think it’s kind of mixed emotions, I think we’re still a little bit sad about what happened last night,” said team Canada player Rebecca Johnston. “We were excited with how we played and obviously Kamloops was a great turn out, it was a lot of fun playing here.”
The players agreed that the city of Kamloops made sure they felt right at home.
“From the time we walked in, we got to the airport and people were chanting ‘go Canada go’ and then we got to the hotel and everyone had their jerseys on and we had little gift baskets in the room and you know, all over town everywhere we went everyone was kind of cheering for us, posters on the walls, we couldn’t have asked for a better event,”said Bailey Bram, team Canada player.
In total more than 38 thousand fans attended the 21 games held at the Sandman and McArthur Island Centres, while one million plus viewers tuned in across the country on TV. The excitement was building in the city as the week went on, and as a result extra tickets were released for the gold medal game.
“The first day when we started selling tickets we essentially sold out that game and the Canada U.S. game, and what we decided to do was put more people in the stands, so we opened the standing room and they sold 500 tickets in 3 minuets, so it was the right thing to do obviously,” said Riley Wiwchar, General Manager of the Women’s World Championship.
Bram says that excitement and energy from the crowd was felt by the players on the ice.
“It was pretty special, they were just going nuts the whole time, and you know, being on the ice you really feel that and use that energy to your advantage and I just can’t say enough good things about it.”
Looking back at the week, organizers say hosting the event in a smaller city worked to their advantage as the whole community came together.
“Canada has only hosted it 7 times in it’s history, so the fact that Kamloops was able to host it, a smaller town like this, I think it’s once in a life time and hopefully it’s going to leave a huge legacy moving forward for other events that Kamloops can host,” Wiwchar said.
The event drew more than 38-thousand fans and saw Kamloops exposed to a national television audience for more than a week.
