Rebels Capture Mac's Midget Title

A Rebel yell was audible after the female championship game at the Mac's midget AAA hockey tournament.

"It was crazy,'' said Delaney Frey, whose overtime goal gave the Regina Rebels a 3-2 victory over the Edmonton Thunder on Sunday at the Max Bell Centre in Calgary.

"Everybody was jumping up and down, and there was a huge pile. I was at the bottom, almost dying.''

The crush of excitement followed a breakout pass from Nikki Watters-Matthes - who was named the tournament's top defenceman and a first-team all-star - to Frey, who proceeded to park a wrist shot behind Edmonton goalie Chloe Sanderson for the winning goal with 53 seconds left in the first overtime period.

"We were the underdogs, so winning it was unbelievable,'' said Frey, a 14-yearold product of Weybur n who is billeted in Regina and attends LeBoldus High School.

"Nobody really thought we could pull off the win. When we did, it was a great feeling. There aren't many words that can describe it.''

The Rebels avenged a 4-3 round-robin loss to the Thunder, which won its pool. The St. Albert Slash and defending-champion Saskatoon Stars were the other pool winners. The Thunder, Slash and Stars were joined in the semifinal round by the Rebels, who claimed the lone wild-card playoff berth.

In the semifinals, Edmonton defeated Saskatoon 3-1 and Regina doubled St. Albert 6-3. Talia Terry had two goals for the Rebels in their semifinal victory. Frey, Watters-Matthes, Eleanor Lekach and Jenna Carpenter-Boesch also scored for the Rebels.

Terry and Teah Anderson scored in regulation-time for the Rebels in the final. Terry's power-play goal in the third period forced overtime. Rae McClintock was the winning goaltender.

The Rebels were competing at the Mac's tournament for the fourth time. They had not advanced beyond the round-robin until this year.

The Rebels are a seventhyear franchise. They were a club team during the 2005-06 season, in which they played an exhibition schedule, before joining the Saskatchewan Female Midget AAA Hockey League for its inaugural season (2006-07).

Entering the second half of the season, the Rebels have a 9-9-0-0 record and are fifth in the eight-team league. The first-place Stars (15-2-0-0) and fourth-place Prince Albert Bears (8-8-1-2) also took part in the Mac's tournament, at which Regina won five of its six games to improve its overall record to 25-14-2-0.

"This is so exciting for the players and their families and everyone involved with the Rebels program,'' said the Rebels' Doug Folk, who was named the tournament's outstanding coach in the female division.

"So much hard work goes into it and, when there's a reward like this, it's very satisfying.''

The Rebels were the first Regina team to win a title at the Mac's tournament since its inception in 1978. It was an exclusively male tournament until the female division was introduced eight years ago. A team from Saskatchewan has won seven of the eight female championships