On a Sunday afternoon in September, 50 exhilarated girls arrived at the Class of 1965 Arena to meet their new mentors \u2014 members of the women\u2019s hockey team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The event kicked off a new program called Rising Raiders, which connects each of the 25 members of the women\u2019s hockey team with local girls ages 6\u201314.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe want our players to be role models whom young girls can look up to and aspire to be one day,\u201d says Assistant Women\u2019s Hockey Coach Chelsea Walkland. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t too long ago that [our players] were kids themselves, and could probably pinpoint someone who inspired them to pursue their path.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Walkland recruited Sydney Marsh, the team\u2019s director of player support and creative media, and team captain Danielle Serdachny \u201923 to help her bring Rising Raiders to life. They contacted the heads of youth hockey programs within a two-hour radius of Hamilton, asking them to spread the word. When registration began, all 50 spots were filled in days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The program allows each participant to attend a home game as either a \u201cRaider of the Day\u201d or \u201cYouth Manager of the Game.\u201d Children selected as a \u201cRaider of the Day\u201d have their names announced during the starting lineup and join the team on the ice. The \u201cYouth Manager of the Game\u201d works behind the scenes by arranging pucks and sticks, and bringing water bottles to the bench. The child also watches on-ice warm-ups from the Raiders\u2019 bench.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe goal is to give our participants as many opportunities to interact directly with our team as possible,\u201d Marsh says. \u201cWe pull back the curtain and let them and their families see what our players see as they prepare for game day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Serdachny adds: \u201cWe also think it\u2019s an awesome opportunity to help grow the game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new program called Rising Raiders connects the women\u2019s hockey team with local girls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1263,"featured_media":11526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[40,49,69],"coauthors":[1130],"class_list":["post-11360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scene","tag-athletics","tag-community","tag-hockey"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-2Xe","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2023\/02\/2Q5A0070_edit.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11360"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11561,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11360\/revisions\/11561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11360"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}