USA Hockey Women’s National Festival Opens at Schwan’s.

Nine goalies in opening on-ice evaluations at the Woman's National Festival

A USA Hockey U18 team and a U22 team will be selected in the next 10 days to play a three game series with Canada as part of the USA Hockey Women’s National Festival that opened this week at the Schwan Super Rink.  The U18 games will be played at Schwan’s Thursday night August 16 (7:00), Friday night August 17 (7:00), and Sunday morning August 19 (10:00 AM).  The U22 games will be played in Canada.

Schwan's Rink 6 is home to the USA Woman's National Team

There will be 79 players will participate including 21 of the 23 Silver Medalist 2010 Olympic team.

Goalie evaluations started on Sunday.  Three U18 goalies and six over-18 players showed up for the for goalies sessions.  One of the U18 goalies is Sydney Rossman who played last season for Minnetonka High School.  She had a 12-3-1 record and a 0.931 save % playing for the Skippers.

Twenty five U18 players will be evaluated over the next 10 days.  Minnesota forward players to be evaluated include Sydney Baldwin, Sidney Morin, and Maliya Rogers all from Minnetonka; Danielle Cameranesi (Blake), Amy Menke (Shakopee), Katherine Schipper (Breck), Christine Vetter (Lakeville),Taylor Williamson (Edina), and Megan Wolfe (Eagan).  The goalies completed off-ice testing on the weekend and had two on ice sessions at the Schwan Monday.  The forwards arrived Monday to do off ice testing.  Tuesday the on-ice evaluations start for the forwards.  They will be broken down into teams for practices.  Scrimmages will be played throughout the next 10 days.  A full schedule of events is published on the USA hockey web site.

The games with the Canadians are at Scwhan's start Thursday August 16

Player evaluations will reflect on how to balance the U18 and U22 teams.  The competition with the Canadians and their style of play will also be part of the evaluator’s criteria.  All on-ice sessions will be at the Schwan Super Rink (Rink 6) and are open to the public.  YHH will be covering the Festival including the U18 games with Canadian over the next two weeks.