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www.insideHALTON.com · OAKVILLE BEAVER Thursday, January 17, 2013 · 24 Sports Oakville Beaver SPORTS EDITOR:JONKUIPERIJ Phone 905-632-0588 (ext. 294) email sports@oakvillebeaver.com Loyola grad had to work, literally, for scholarship After picking up a couple of wins last weekend, Maeve Garvey's Burlington Barracudas teammates headed back to school to work on essays and study for their upcoming exams. Garvey woke up and went to work, where her days are filled with cakes and cookies. The Oakville native is in a unique situation among Provincial Women's Hockey League players, the vast majority of whom are attending school while trying to secure hockey scholarships. That's what Garvey was doing last year while playing with the Brampton Thunder. Garvey had a strong rookie season a year ago, leading the team in goals (12) and points (18), and was even named team captain. The team struggled though, finishing the season 7-24-3, and scouts weren't flocking to see a team that placed 17th out of 18 teams. Garvey could have taken Maeve Garvey one of the offers she received from a Canadian university or a Division 3 school in the U.S. but she believed she had the ability to play Division 1. Having graduated with honours from Loyola, there wasn't much benefit in going back to high school to upgrade her marks. So instead, Garvey went to work full time at an Oakville bakery and returned for a second season in the PWHL. While her teammates might be jealous that she doesn't have homework to deal with, Garvey says working full time is not exactly a piece of cake. "It's a different kind of stress," she says. "It's long hours and it is stressful during the day, but once I leave, I can just focus on hockey." Knowing she would need to get more exposure to scouts, she made the decision to switch teams. In the Barracudas, she found a match that has benefitted both parties. The Barracudas had nine players earn Division 1 scholarships last year. That success left the Barracudas with many holes to fill, though. Garvey has stepped and helped to replace some of the departed scoring punch, currently leading the team with 12 goals and 27 points. And, as she hoped, the increased visibility paid off with a scholarship to Robert Morris University for next year. For Garvey, she's reached one goal but hopes to achieve another with a long playoff run -- as Burlington did last year, reaching the PWHL's final four -- before heading off to school. And while she's enjoyed the opportunity to put aside a little money for school, "I want to get back in the classroom," she says. -- Herb Garbutt NIKKI WESLEY / OAKVILLE BEAVER / @HALTON_PHOTOG HOCKEY NEWS, FAST: Iroquois Ridge High School students (pictured from left) Steven Ellis, Jackson Scarrow, Samuel Lehner and Cameron Brushett own and operate TheHockeyHouse.net, a website that features hockey news from across the globe. The site has already attracted more than 100,000 unique visitors since its inception in October 2011. A site to behold for hockey fans Iroquois Ridge students' website covers much more than just the NHL By Jon Kuiperij BEAVER SPORTS EDITOR Hockey. News. Fast. That's the slogan of TheHockeyHouse. net, and it's hardly an empty promise. In less than two years of existence, the website is already gaining a reputation as consistently being one of the fastest English-speaking outlets to report international hockey news. That's not the most impressive thing about TheHockeyHouse, however. Neither is the fact that, even in spite of the National Hockey League lockout, the site has attracted more than 100,000 unique visitors and more than 350,000 page views in the past 16 months. No, the most impressive thing about TheHockeyHouse.net is that it is run by a group of Oakville high school students. Steven Ellis, Jackson Scarrow, Samuel Lehner and Cameron Brushett are the four Grade 11 students at Iroquois Ridge responsible for creating TheHockeyHouse, maintaining the website and continually stocking it with recent international hockey news. Interestingly, only three of the four students are avid hockey fans (though Lehner, the site designer, says hockey has "grown a bit" on him), and just two (Ellis and Scarrow) play organized hockey themselves. The site officially launched in October 2011, with the modest goal of simply being a platform for aspiring hockey writers. It quickly became much more than that. "At the website we worked for before (starting TheHockeyHouse.net), we were getting maybe 2,000 views a month," said Ellis, referring to stories he and Scarrow used to write for a different site. "Two weeks ago, we were getting 2,000 views in half a day." One key to TheHockeyHouse's success was assembling a large stable of writers who are diehard followers of many different teams in the NHL. All of the site's outside authors provide news and opinions about NHL squads, and they each do so for free. "The trade-off has been that we're giv- ing them the ability to come in and write, have people see it and critique them, and allow them to grow and evolve as a writer," Lehner said. But many of those writers didn't have much to write about during the NHL lockout. That's where another one of TheHockeyHouse's biggest assets -- coverage of more hockey than just the NHL -- really paid off. When the lights went out on the NHL last fall, Ellis turned his attention to international hockey, particularly the European leagues. "Personally, I prefer international hockey over the NHL," Ellis said. "So when the lockout happened, I wasn't at a loss. Every morning, I watched Swiss hockey games, Russian hockey games. We'd write about signings and releases and trades." In a way, the NHL lockout was a godsend for TheHockeyHouse. The high school students discovered there was a niche market for English-language reports on the Swedish Elite League, Kontinental Hockey League (Russia), Deutschen Eishockey Liga (Germany), National League A (Switzerland) and other leagues See International, page 25