Nothing brings a team of champions together like losing – repeatedly – to Olympic champions. At least that’s part of what Rustler Kylie Perry attributes to her team’s rise to the top in only their third year in the ACAC league.

The other ingredients that make a successful team on the ice? Talent, team bonding, and a whole lot of hard work.

The Lakeland Rustlers women’s hockey team joined Lakeland’s athletics in 2021, playing in the Alberta Junior Female Hockey League as a club team for a year before joining the ACAC. Head Coach Morgan Mann recruited a roster of student-athletes to hit the ice.

“We were all rookies who’d never played in the ACAC before,” recalls Kylie Perry, a forward and one of the players Mann first reached out to when starting up the team. She used to play against the Lloydminster Steelers when Mann was their coach.

Perry hails from Ponoka, Alta., and has been playing hockey since the second grade. She was supposed to play for Trinity Western University, but her plans had been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’d heard good things about him as a coach,” she says. “People liked playing for him and there were a few other girls from Red Deer who I’d played with before who’d already committed to the Lakeland team, so I decided, why not? Let’s go to Lloydminster.”

Initially, Perry had only intended to spend a year in Lloydminster, get some experience, take some classes at the college before moving on. She came for the coaching staff but ended up falling in love with the culture and community and decided to stay and work towards a bachelor in commerce through Lakeland’s partnership with Athabasca University.

“The experience has been great — the school, instructors, the people in the community, the coaches, my teammates,” Perry says. “I love it in Lloydminster. The coaching staff built a really strong culture and community. It was exciting to be a new team, we’re like a family. It was easy to jump into things and know that everyone was totally buying in. We didn’t miss a step when we were coming into the league.”

In their first year as members of the Alberta Junior Female Hockey League, the team started off strong, becoming provincial champions before taking their place in the ACAC. In their 2022-23 season, they won provincial bronze. In 2023-24, they won silver. And in 2024-25, they finished their climb to the top with provincial gold.

“It was awesome, getting to win with that group,” Perry says. She credits their swift rise to the top with how close she and her teammates are, a bond that was solidified with most players living in residence.

“In a lot of ACAC teams, no one really lives on campus,” she explains. “Almost all of us did. The dorms are great. We were only a 30-second walk to the next person’s house. We hung out a lot, walked to class together, carpooled to hockey. It brought us all together.”

Another aspect that brought the team together was their trip to Europe over Christmas in 2024. They spent 11 days travelling together, playing hockey together, and losing in spectacular fashion.

“We played five exhibition games in Switzerland and Germany,” Perry says. “We were playing against Switzerland’s pro women’s teams with some high-class players who play in the Olympics for the national teams. They were so good and we got beat pretty good as well. It was a great experience and we had the opportunity to work on our D zone. Coming back, we were stronger as a group.”

Aside from the talent, team bonding and culture, however, the main ingredient Perry credits with turning a team of rookies into provincial champions in only a handful of years is hard work.

“We gave it all we’ve got,” she says. “It’s like the quote, ‘hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.’ We have some talent on the team, but we also have a whole lot of hard work, and that’s what we plan to do next year. It’s hard to beat a team that works this hard.”