Estevan’s Megan LeBlanc was a first year hockey player in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Association but she didn’t get the kind of points associated with rookie-hood.
LeBlanc, playing with the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology’s Ooks, won the league’s rookie of the year award for her outstanding contributions in the 2017-18 season. She scored six goals and nine assists in 22 regular season games with the Ooks before their first round exit of the playoffs at the hands of the Red Deer College Queens.
“Coming onto a new team, our team had worked together well from the beginning and our line was doing good,” said LeBlanc, who didn’t have any experience with those players.
The Ooks went 18-4-2 in the regular season, good enough for second place in the five team league.
“I knew they were a good team coming in and I knew they were a top of the league for the most part. I expected (us) to finish near the top and that’s what we did,” she said.
The Ooks scored a league high 82 goals in the season, which led the league by 12 over table-topping Grant McEwen University.
“We have a lot of the key players in the league on our team,” she said. “We have a very strong offensive team. Most of the top scorers are on our team. There’s a lot of individual talent on our team.”
LeBlanc played on the Estevan Power Tech Panthers midget team as a 15-year-old in the 2014-15 season, scoring a league-high 31 goals and 17 assists over 27 games en route to a South Saskatchewan Female Hockey League midget AA title.
She moved from there to Saskatchewan Female Midget AAA Hockey League with Notre Dame in 2015-16 and the Melville Prairie Fire of that league the season after, where she was sixth in league scoring.
LeBlanc hopes to continue on in her studies after next season, which she plans to spend at NAIT.
“I hope to get a championship next year,” she said. “We have a lot of new people coming in next year, with a lot of rookies. I hope we can all work well together and hopefully come out with a championship.”
There may be hockey after NAIT for her, or perhaps university in 2020.
“I would like to pursue my hockey career after that, but I don’t know that answer yet,” she said. “I’ll see where my life’s at in a couple of years.”
