Burnaby defender Kaleigh Fratkin shared a gold medal with Canada’s women’s development hockey team at the Nation’s Cup in Fussen, Germany.
Canada blanked Sweden 4-0 in the gold-medal game, outshooting the triple crown national team three-to-one in the tournament championship final on Jan. 6.
Canada won Pool B, defeating the Russian national team 5-1 on Jan. 4 after opening the annual tournament with a 4-1 victory over Finland the day before.
Sweden won the A pool over Germany and Switzerland.
“It was a great experience,” said Fratkin, who is currently working towards her master’s degree at Northeastern University. “Every game was really fun to play. When teams play Canada, it’s like a gold-medal game for them.”
Fratkin, a Boston University grad, scored Canada’s final goal against the Finns, firing a point shot past netminder Riikka Valila midway through the third period.
Victoria Bach, a Boston University freshman from Milton, Ont., scored in all three games for Canada and was the tournament’s leading scorer with five goals and six points overall.
Canada warmed up for the six-team tournament with shutout wins over Hungary and Austria, before knocking off host Germany 6-1 on Jan. 2.
The 22-year-old Fratkin was the only player from B.C. named to the women’s development team and remains committed to becoming one of a growing list of players from B.C. to wear the maple leaf on the senior national team.
“It only gets harder,” Fratkin said, on a long-distance call from Boston on Thursday. “It’s like anything in life, you don’t know where you will end up. But it’s been a pretty cool journey.”
That journey has taken her to the top tier of major midget men’s hockey, a full-ride NCAA Division I athletic scholarship and now to the cusp of the national senior women’s team program.
“I don’t like to give up,” Fratkin added. “It reminds me of all the sacrifices I’ve put in. You just hope that one opportunity comes along.”
The gold medal at the Nation’s Cup was Canada’s 10th over the past 13 years, and fourth in the last five years, at the tournament, which was previously called the Air Canada Cup, MLP Cup and Meco Cup. Canada had a previous string of five consecutive Cup wins from 2003 to 2008.
