The identity of the Rocky Mountain Rage, Cochrane’s newest elite sports team that is set to begin play this fall, is slowly rounding into form as its logo and coaching staff were introduced at an event on May 3.
Soon to begin play as the 14 team in the National Ringette League (NRL), Canada’s premier national league for elite ringette players 18 and older, with teams all across the country from Richmond, B.C., to Dieppe, New Brunswick– the Rage will be the fourth Alberta team, and first from outside Edmonton and Calgary.
Chris Kelly, the head coach of the Zone 2 U19AA Blaze, which is coming off an impressive win at this year’s Canadian Ringette Championships last month, was announced as the team’s inaugural coach at a Rage gathering at The Canadian Brewhouse in Cochrane on Saturday.
With 24 years of coaching experience, Kelly co-founded and coached the Central Alberta AA Sting program for 14 years. He coached for three seasons with the Edmonton AA Ringette Club, and three seasons with the NRL's Edmonton WAM!, culminating with a silver medal at the 2022 NRL Championships.
Kelly has an accomplished track record as part of the coaching staff of Team Alberta at the 2015 Canada Winter Games, and as head coach at the 2023 Canada Winter Games. He was recently announced as the coach of Team Alberta once again for the 2027 games. Kelly has been part of three Alberta Provincial Championship teams, one Canadian Ringette Championship team, and has international experience as part of the staff for Team USA at the 2014 World Ringette Championships.
When the Rage take to the ice this fall, they will be doing so as representatives of the smallest community in the NRL’s Western Conference. The other teams in the West, the Edmonton Black Gold Rush, Edmonton WAM!, Calgary RATH, BC Thunder (who play in Richmond), Saskatchewan Heat (Saskatoon), and the Manitoba Herd (Winnipeg), all play in cities with much larger populations that have been supporting their teams for years, and even decades.
Kelly believes that having an NRL team in Cochrane will be a boon for the sport at the local level and for the community as a whole.
“I think it’s huge for here in town,” he said. “These athletes at this level, they’re not only the best of the best on the ice, they’re great role models as well. All the athletes [in the NRL] give back to the community and we’re going to be doing the same thing here.”
Jen Rice, a member of the Rage founding committee, who has worked alongside other members of the committee for years to bring an NRL team to Cochrane, said that their belief was that if you can grow the sport by introducing more teams into the league, the athletes will grow in skill and number alongside it.
“All of these girls have hope they can play at the highest level,” Rice said. “Previously, the girls would just finish out at U19 and then they have nowhere to go, but now there is a place where they can keep playing for the next 10 to 15 years.”
Rice said that 10 years ago there was just a single U19 ringette team in all of southern Alberta. Today, there are three. As the sport continues to grow at the community and national level, more opportunities are presented for players to continue playing the sport they love.
The Rage have a logo and a coaching staff, next come the players. In August, the Rage will have tryouts to round out its roster. It’s suspected that most of the roster will be made up of girls who are at universities, like the University of Calgary, who have the skill to play, but had nowhere to do so.
“Skill on the ice is important,” said Leigh Sauer, the Rage assistant coach who has spent the last two seasons with the University of Calgary Ringette team, which won the National championship, also called the University Challenge Cup, this past season. A coach for different Calgary associations since 2005, Sauer won six Alberta Provincial Championships and four Western Canadian Championships before joining the Dinos staff.
“In addition [to skill], we’re really trying to build a culture here, and so we’re looking for good people and good teammates and a bunch of athletes that can play for one another and not just be on the team. [We want] them to be good role models for the community.”
Team tryouts have been scheduled for the end of August, with the roster expected to be announced shortly thereafter.
