Year 1 of the seven-team Sask Female Bantam AA Hockey League may have come to a halt without crowning an inaugural champion, but the Graphic Edge Wildcats still round out their 2019-20 campaign having set a gold standard to try and duplicate annually.

The Bantam Wildcats started their first year of existence by drawing in talent from Fiske to Lafleche, and everywhere in between.

"We had a pretty good idea on the local girls and where our talent was," said head coach Cheyenne Arntsen. "We had a handful of girls come from about 180 kilometres away. So, we weren't sure through the summer and right up until fall camp whether or not some of those girls would commit financially and time-wise. They were three-and-a-half hours to and from practice twice a week - that was a fairly big commitment."

"Once we had fall camp and realized where we were at with our players, we knew we would have a strong team, and then just kind of took it from there."

Having brought in the best talent from west central to the edge of south central Saskatchewan, the gelling process wasn't instant due to some unfamiliarity among the team, though it didn't take very long at all to get rolling.

Swift Current played the opener of the 24-game regular season October 23 on home ice at Fairview East. That 3-3 draw was later followed up with a 3-2 win on October 26 and a 2-2 draw the next night to round out the first calendar month of the year at 1-0-2.

"Usually when you're on a house program, like most of these girls had been part of, there's one or two players that are really excelling," Arntsen said. "Well now, when you bring that whole group together (to Bantam AA), it was a fairly big learning curve for some of them - how to play as a team, how to play with each other, distributing the puck, making the right plays and things like that they'd never been exposed to."

That record quickly trended upwards though, as the Wildcats racked up a 14-4-3 mark over their final 21 games to finish at 15-4-5.

"The girls put in a ton of work. We had a high level of skill on our team. With any team, you kind of go throughout the year, move some people around, and see where they're at. You try to get everybody into key situations to see where everybody will best succeed," Arntsen explained.

Swift Current finished the regular season with three players in the top 10 in league scoring:

3rd - Sadie Keller - 33 pts (19 G, 14 A)
5th - Calla Kampen - 25 pts (6 G, 19 A)
7th - Jerzey Watteyne - 23 pts (15 G, 8 A)

Goalie Brooke Archer also earned the third-lowest goals-against-average (1.71) in the league, while working an 11-1-3 record over 16 appearances.

The team's regular-season record put them in a tie for first place in the standings with the Regina Rebels. The Bantam Wildcats won the tie-breaker though, to earn home ice advantage through the playoffs.

After a first-round bye, the Wildcats matched up with the fifth-seeded Northwest Sharks in the league semi-finals.

The best-of-three series was quickly swept - though with a pair of close contests - as Swift Current earned wins of 4-3 and 2-0.

That put the Bantam Wildcats in the league/provincial finals against the third-place Prince Albert Foxes who had just swept the second-seeded Rebels (4-0, 5-4).

"From where we started till the (finals), we just kept getting better and better every weekend - it was quite evident," said Arntsen. "One of our goals was to finish first - we managed to do that. We wanted to make a deep run into playoffs - we did that. The success and the work that was put in by the girls was just phenomenal."

However, the current COVID-19 pandemic caused Hockey Canada and Sask Hockey Association (SHA) to cancel all sanctioned events for the remainder of the 2019-20 season. The ruling came two days before the provincial final was set to open in Swift Current.

Despite the inability to play for a league trophy, the Bantam Wildcats' bench boss noted that shouldn't diminish the team's positive takeaway from their year.

"We had a special group of girls. They worked hard, they put in the effort that they needed to put in, and should take a lot of pride in the effort that they did put in," Artnsen said. "That last step, we didn't get an opportunity to do it unfortunately, but it is what it is. We don't need the banner, we finished first throughout the year, we won every season series. They should take that as a positive, even though they didn't get to experience that last playoff round."

With the brilliant Bantam Wildcats' campaign, and relative sense of parity around the league, Arntsen noted that the inclusion of the Bantam AA level in SHA's development model for female hockey was both vital, and a success.

"It's huge, as far as skill development. Some of them could have played AAA in the past, when girls would play where they're 13 and 14 years old. But for them to be able to do it amongst their peers, against girls that are the same age, the same calibre, it just allowed a lot of girls more puck time, more key situations," he said.

"Now, when they go into Midget, they've been exposed to that. They've had a year where the competition has been high. They've been able to play amongst that system, and I think it was a great step by SHA to make that league for female hockey."

With the end of Year 1, the 2006-born Bantam Wildcats will now get to return and serve as those team leaders, as the program looks to repeat its prominent outing in 2020-21.

As for the graduating second-years, look for a high percentage of those players to be helping keep the Female Midget AA and AAA Wildcats programs strong starting in the fall, and lasting for the next three years.