Thiessen stands tall for St. Mary’s

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This article was published 09/03/2016 (3783 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Once again, some of the top hockey players of their generation are set to converge on Winnipeg in a bid for attention from scouts.

It’s called the fourth annual Female World Sport School Challenge, and it features 10 of the top girls’ prep teams from Canada and the United States. But when play kicks off at the MTS Iceplex, Thursday, one could call the tournament something else. 

 Just call it a preview of some possible future greats.

Among the teens competing will be five players from Team Canada’s U18 roster, including Balmoral Hall star Ryleigh Houston and St. Mary’s captain Kayla Friesen. For the first time, venerated hockey school Shattuck-St. Mary’s will join the action. 

They’re all there to get some ice time in front of scouts from CIS and the NCAA — and many of them could have their hands full when going up against the young St. Mary’s Flames defenceman.

Meet Kyra Thiessen. Although only in Grade 11, she has already committed to play at Mercyhurst University, a hockey powerhouse that has won 10 CHA conference championships since 2003, and made four NCAA Frozen Four appearances.

She was only in Grade 9 when colleges started swarming, soon after she switched from boys’ teams to St. Mary’s. After two years of deliberation, Thiessen made her final choice last August, just before she started her Grade 11 season.

“I was pretty amazed that it would start that early,” Thiessen said, after practice earlier this week. “I had heard from other girls… that to talk to schools in Grade 9 was pretty cool. And I was thinking how this decision would impact my future.”

The signs of her talent showed up early. In many ways, hockey is in Thiessen’s blood: her uncle Mike Ford was a defenceman on the original Winnipeg Jets, in the WHA era of Anders Hedberg, Ulf Nilsson and Bobby Hull.

More immediately, she is also the youngest of four siblings, the rest of them sporty brothers. Her brother Dylan Thiessen now plays in the MJHL for the Virden Oil Capitals; all of them used to tumble around with her playing hockey and football.

Did they go easy on their little sister? “Umm, not usually,” Thiessen said, and laughed. “I was always competing with them.”

In fact, when Thiessen was 10 she competed as an age-advanced player on a boys’ team, just so she could play with her brother for one more year. Looking back, Thiessen thinks that’s about the time she realized she had talent.

“That was the first year of hitting,” she said. “I knew I had to be just as fast, just as strong as the boys so I could compete at that level.”

Flash forward just over six years later, and Thiessen is a key peg on a St. Mary’s squad led by Team Canada U18 member Friesen, as well as a member of the U18 provincial team that fought to the final of the national championships in November.

Now, she has bigger goals: while Mercyhurst looms in the not-too-distant future, Thiessen also hopes to crack a national team roster. To get there, she will rely on the work ethic that sees her training five days a week in the off-season.

“She’s worked really hard,” said Thiessen’s mother, Anne-Marie Ford. “If you want to go the university route, you’ve missed a lot of stuff. You’ve missed a lot of birthday parties and sleepovers and dances. You have to be committed to what you’re doing, and she does it on her own.

“It’s never been us as parents saying, ‘Nope, you’ve gotta stay home.’ She’s always been able to make those decisions on her own.”

Looking beyond this tournament, the Flames are set to do a bit of a shuffle next season, as their Canadian Sport School Hockey League shored up its format with a full competitive schedule and championship playoffs.

The league also adjusted to allow for two divisions, varsity and prep; St. Mary’s will play in the prep division, along with schools such as Calgary’s Edge School for Athletes.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca