40 - The Oakville Beaver, Friday September 28, 2007 www.oakvillebeaver.com Junior Ice opens this weekend The Oakville junior AA Ice will open the Provincial Women's Hockey League season this weekend with a pair of home games at Canlan Ice Sports. Oakville will host the MarkhamStouffville Stars tomorrow (Saturday) and Whitby Wolves on Sunday. Both contests are scheduled for 1:15 p.m. starts. The PWHL is comprised of 17 teams this season. The Ice's senior team, meanwhile, will not compete in National Women's Hockey League play this season. In fact, none of the seven clubs in the NWHL's Eastern Division will ice a squad this winter, after owners voted last spring to suspend operations for at least one season. The NWHL's biggest issue, according to Ice owner Bill Metcalfe, is the distribution of talent. Each player becomes a free agent at the end of every season, meaning they can join any team they wish and making it hard to maintain competitive balance. Sticking to it LIESA KORTMANN / OAKVILLE BEAVER FIELD HOCKEY UNDERWAY: Holy Trinity's Jaclyn Santamaria (left) and T.A. Blakelock's Alex Saunders chase down the ball during Halton high school girls' field hockey competition Tuesday at Oakville Trafalgar. Trinity prevailed, 1-0. STARTING WITH SILVER: Both the Oakville minor atom A (above) and novice AAA Rangers (left) won silver medals at early-season hockey tournaments this month. Minor atom, novice Rangers earn tournament silvers In the first rep tournament for many of its players, the Oakville Rangers minor atom A hockey team earned silver at the recent Richmond Hill Early Bird competition. The Rangers knocked off North York, Richmond Hill and Cobourg -- the latter being the defending OMHA Eastern Region champion -- to reach the final, where they fell 2-0 to Amherstburg. "Up until this tournament, our team had only skated together six times, and this was the first rep tournament for most of our players," said Rangers head coach Jody Zedor. "We have 10 players on our team that have moved up from MOHA house league hockey. The entire team had a lot of fun, played a lot of hockey and had a fantastic weekend experience." Members of the team are Bradley Byers, Andrew Ciuffreda, Caleb Cutcliffe, Alex Filippini, Sean Garvey, Benjamin Hamburg, Christopher Howarth, Kyle Kolwich, Craig McCormick, Brian See Novices page 45