(Submitted photo/Dean Demers)

By Nick Nielsen

Three time champs

Debden Roadrunners looking to bring fourth straight national broomball championship to Saskatchewan

Dec 11, 2024 | 4:33 PM

Four years ago, the province of Saskatchewan had never had a national champion in U20 women’s broomball. The Debden Roadrunners have now given the province three straight, and they are looking to make it four as they get set for the season to start this winter.

With this year’s national championships set for Val-d’Or, Quebec, the Roadrunners will already have a spot in the tournament set for the end of March. Head Coach Dean Demers said that the team started the season started off well, and the respect they have at the national level has completely changed in the three years they’ve been champions.

“These are all small town, Saskatchewan girls. We weren’t getting any respect when we first went there from Ontario and Quebec teams, they were just like, ‘Oh yeah, another Saskatchewan team’, but once we showed up last year as the two time defending champs, holy smokes, they know who these girls from Saskatchewan are now.”

The regular season for the U20 broomball team is different than a regular season for most other sports. Instead of having games throughout the week, they play in five tournaments in Saskatchewan throughout the year where all teams are invited. At the end of the season, the teams gather for a provincial championship where the winner goes to the national championships. As the reigning national champs, the Roadrunners already have a spot in the national tournament.

The Roadrunners already started their season with a tournament in Big River, and the season got off to a good start. They won two games and lost on in the round robin, giving themselves a chance at the final where they won 2-1 in overtime for their first tournament win of the year.

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When asked why Debden has become the spot where broomball seems to be flourishing, Demers is unsure how it got started, but it has been a beloved pastime in the community for generations.

“Way before my time, broomball was real popular in our area in the 70s and 80s stuff as adults. There was a bunch of adult teams playing all over the place and then eventually somebody started the kids program. So yeah, we’ve had kids going through school playing broomball since the 80s and 90s and all this stuff, and now in the in the last three years that we’ve gone, we’ve just had such good athletes and good players on the team that they were actually good enough to win the whole entire nationals tournaments.”

The Broomball Canada Girls Juvenile Nationals have been around for 32 years now according to Demers’ account, and a Saskatchewan team has never won before the Debden Roadrunners. Now that they are a three time defending champs, he’s hoping his team can continue to make history.

“When the Debden Roadrunners did win the first time in 2022, we were the first Saskatchewan team ever to win nationals for U20 ladies. It hadn’t been done before, and so out right off the bat we made history there in Cornwall, Ontario that year, but geez, these girls won it in 2022, won it again in 23, won it again in 24. They just keep making history every time they’re going and winning again.”

With broomball being played on hockey ice, there are a lot of similarities between the two sports. It’s the same personnel on the ice, three forwards, two defenceman, and a goalie, and so a lot of the same strategy in hockey carries over to the broomball ice.

“The rules are almost the same. The only difference would be your center line is your off side rule instead of the two blue lines in hockey. So other than that, yeah, you copy a lot of strategy and a lot of everything else is the same as hockey. So the only difference is you’re running in shoes instead of skating on skates.”

This year’s national championships are set for Val-d’Or, Quebec starting on March 26, 2025.