Rossland’s Thea Culley and the Team Canada women’s field hockey team captured bronze on Sunday at the International Super Series Hockey 9s in Perth, Australia.
The Canadians made a grand entrance and Culley scored the winning goal in the 19th minute of the bronze-medal match beating Malaysia 3-1.
Team Canada players delighted crowds throughout the series with their unique and imaginative introgressions onto the pitch. Entering the stadium through a cloud of dry ice, music blaring, the players would deliver every form of dance move from “the worm to the twerk and all points of naughtiness in between” reported the Hockey 9s website, which soon turned the engaging Canucks into crowd favourites.
Canadian captain Danielle Hennig opened the scoring on a hard drive from the middle of the D at the 17th minute mark. Moments later, Culley would put the team up 2-0, before Malaysia would cut the score to one just after the break. But Stephanie Gardiner restored Canada’s two-goal lead at the 28 minute mark to make the final 3-1.
“It’s a new format but we’re a pretty young team so we’re working on the same core things whether it’s 9s or for the 11-a-side game,” said Hennig. “We are happy with the way we’ve progressed.”
The Canadians lost their opening matches 4-1 to Argentina and 7-0 to Australia’s Hockeyroos, before beating Malaysia 4-1 in the round robin. Australia would go on to beat Argentina 3-0 to win the gold medal.