SASKATOONEXPRESS - March 5-11, 2018 - Page 14
Grace Shirley carves her own identity in hockey
Grace Shirley scored 30 goals this season for the Saskatoon Stars. (Photo by Darren Steinke) Darren Steinke Saskatoon Express rowing up in a hockey-oriented family, Grace Shirley stills gets chills remembering when she lived out her own special moment in the sport. In late March 2016, Shirley was a 14-year-old rookie centre for the Saskatoon Stars when she wired home an overtime winner to give the team a second straight Saskatchewan Female Midget AAA Hockey League championship (SFMAAAHL). Her goal was the difference in a 4-3 victory for the Stars over the host Swift Current Diamond Energy Wildcats in Game 4 of the SFMAAAHL title series and allowed Saskatoon to claim the best-
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the squad as a late addition. Shirley played at the International Ice Hockey Federation’s under-18 women’s world championship Jan. 6 to 13 in Dmitrov, Russia, and helped Canada win a bronze medal. “It was such a good experience,” said Shirley about representing Canada internationally. “I guess it was just an eye opener, because I got to see all the other girls in the country and just how good they were.” Those accomplishments and experiences have helped Shirley carve her own name into the sport as she follows the strides of two older siblings. Older brother Collin played five seasons in the WHL, spending time with the Kootenay Ice and Kamloops Blazers and is in the later stages of his rookie campaign
U of S scientists part of ozone study
By Chris Putnam mid hopeful signs of a recovery, a crucial part of Earth’s protective ozone layer continues to decline. That is the conclusion of an international team of scientists, including Doug Degenstein and Adam Bourassa of the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, whose new study has shown that ozone in the Earth’s lower stratosphere is still thinning. Several recent studies have found signs that ozone levels in parts of the atmosphere have stopped declining or begun to
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of-five series 3-1. “I couldn’t really believe it,” said Shirley. “At first, I think I was just kind of like, ‘Whoa, what just happened?’ It was good for sure.” Shirley, who stands 5-foot-4, is now a 16-year-old, third-year veteran with the Stars. She is having a special season. In 23 regular-season games, she recorded 30 goals and 18 assists to finish fourth in league scoring. Besides having a great individual season with the Stars to help them post a 243-1 record to top the standings for a fourth straight year, Shirley received a special surprise shortly before Christmas. She was originally cut from Canada’s under-18 women’s team, but returned to
with the University of Saskatchewan Huskies men’s hockey team. Older sister Sophie was on Canada’s under-18 women’s team for two seasons, and is part of Canada’s national women’s development team. She is currently playing with the Inferno, a women’s professional team in Calgary. “They are my role models,” said Grace Shirley. “Obviously seeing them do well and seeing them kind of having the success that they’ve had just kind of motivated me and kind of pushed me to want to do good as well.” In the last three seasons, Shirley has appeared in 82 SFMAAAHL regular-season games. She sits fourth all-time in league history in career regular-season goals with 70 and tenth in career regular-season points at 118. Stars head coach Greg Slobodzian believes Shirley had her best season in 2017-2018. “Obviously, she plays a style of game offensively that is going to get her points,” said Slobodzian. “At the next level, there is so much more to it than that. “As a coaching staff, we try to get them ready for that next level. She is battling way harder. She is getting to those greasy areas now. She is blocking shots. All of those little things and also to be able to pick a corner the way she can pick a corner, she has really developed into a special player.” Shirley plans to join the University of Wisconsin Badgers women’s hockey team when her midget AAA playing days are done. Next season, she wants to represent Canada at the under-18 women’s worlds again. First, she is focused on the Stars current playoff run. They are trying to recapture the SFMAAAHL crown after being swept by the Prince Albert Northern Bears in last year’s best-of-five championship series. Whenever she needs a lift, she thinks back to her overtime winner that delivered the Stars a league title in 2016. “It was awesome, especially because it was like my first year,” said Shirley. “It is kind of a special moment for me, and I don’t think I will forget about it.” (You can see more of Darren Steinke’s work in his online blog stankssermon. blogspot.ca.)
recover. This welcome change is credited to the Montreal Protocol, the 1987 international agreement to phase out the use of ozone-depleting chemicals. But the research published in February shows a more complicated picture. Although a recovery was seen in the upper stratosphere, this improvement was offset by an unexpected decrease of ozone in the lower stratosphere. The researchers found an overall decrease in stratospheric ozone above the planet’s lower latitudes — the region where most humans live. “The Montreal Protocol was highly successful, but this study highlights the
need for continued and detailed global observations of the atmosphere as it evolves in a changing climate,” said Bourassa. The reason for the continuing ozone decline is uncertain. Since ozone protects life on Earth from ultraviolet radiation from the sun, the causes of the trend “urgently need to be established,” the paper says. The study made use of measurements from the Canadian OSIRIS satellite instrument. The OSIRIS science team is led by Degenstein and Bourassa, who helped collect and interpret data for the project. They are co-authors on the paper,
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published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. “OSIRIS data have played a key role in quantifying the clear recovery of the ozone layer at upper altitudes, while hints of this decline have been observed in the measurements for a few years,” said Degenstein. The paper caught international attention, with coverage in The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, The Washington Post and other news outlets. (Chris Putnam is a communications officer in the College of Arts & Science at the University of Saskatchewan.)
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