Over the course of four years, Melody Davidson has seen significant change in women’s hockey.

“When we first started, you could sit down and watch the scrimmages or the ice times and you could pick out the North American players, Canada and the U.S., without a roster sheet,” says Davidson, Hockey Canada’s general manager of national women’s team programs. “And the last couple of years, I started to need a roster sheet to know my own players, or know the American players.”

Davidson is referring to the rise of the IIHF’s Women’s High-Performance Camp, which has brought together some of the top young female U18 players since 2012. After the camp in Vierumaki, Finland, last year, two camps will be held simultaneously in Canada and the United States in early to mid-August. The camps will include top athletes from 16 countries.

The Women’s High-Performance Camp originated in 2011 when the IIHF and its members decided to take action to improve competitiveness of the women’s game. Jacques Rogge, former president of the IOC, challenged women’s hockey with scathing remarks about the state of the game following several one-sided games at the 2010 Olympics.

That challenge led to the initiatives such as this camp, which began in 2011 with a focus on senior women’s development. In 2012, the decision was made to focus on development at the under-18 level.

Davidson, who coached Canada’s national women’s team before moving on to the GM role, says the camps are working. They’re working so well, in fact, that the IIHF has changed the format for 2015.

In years past, players from all countries were split evenly among a number of teams. Canadians and Americans, the long-time women’s hockey leaders, were split up to practice and play alongside Czechs, Russians, Germans and players from other countries.

This year, Canada and the United States played host to their own camps and iced their own full teams to take on IIHF all-star teams. Canada took its top 43 U18 players, split them into Teams Red and White, and had those teams take on an all-star team made up of the finest players that other IIHF countries have to offer.

The two Canadian teams, plus Team IIHF (made up of players from Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Japan, Korea, Norway and Switzerland), took part in the high performance camp from Aug. 7-17 in Calgary at Canada Olympic Park.

USA Hockey, meanwhile, held a similar camp from Aug. 7-17 in Lake Placid, New York, with players from Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Russia, Slovakia and Sweden taking part. The top 31 American U18 players played three games against the IIHF all-star team.

“Coming out of last year, we realized that the countries had really bought in and they were sending their best players,” says Davidson. “Their best players were as good as any of our players on a small scale. We just had more depth than most of them.

“What we were starting to see was the challenge to the other countries’ players wasn’t quite as high because they were fitting in and, at times, they were challenging our players. So our next step was, how do we continue to grow them and get them to understand there is still another level out there yet? These are five of our best players but there’s still a whole team. So we were looking for a bit of a change.”

During the camps in Calgary and Lake Placid, all athletes took part in practices, several exhibition games, off-ice dryland training, fitness testing and high performance classroom sessions with the goal to make everybody a better athlete.

“This is an opportunity for us to take a number of different countries and share some of the best practices that we have at USA Hockey and Hockey Canada,” says Reagan Carey, director of women’s hockey at USA Hockey. “It’s critical to be proactive teammates in growing our sport.”

Following the two development camps, both USA Hockey and Hockey Canada named their 23-player U18 teams that competed in a three-game series in Lake Placid from Aug. 20-23. All of this was part of the process in determining who will represent their countries at the 2016 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 Women’s World Championship, Jan. 8-15, 2016, in St. Catharines near Toronto.

ROSTERS CALGARY

Team IIHF

Goaltenders:
Emilie Kristiansen (NOR)
Jenna Silvonen (FIN)
Katerina Zechovska (CZE)

Defencemen:
Lisa Delcroix (FRA)
Antonia Matzka (AUT)
Eve Savander (FIN)
Aoi Shiga (JPN)
Shannon Sigrist (SUI)
Juliette Vial (FRA)
Martina Zednikova (CZE)

Forwards:
Tess Allemann (SUI)
Chloe Aurard (FRA)
Jiyeon Choi (KOR)
Josefine Biseth Engmann (NOR)
Yoshino Enomoto (JPN)
Andrine Furulund (NOR)
Ran Hinata (JPN)
Laura Kraus (AUT)
Petra Nieminen (FIN)
Kristyna Patkova (CZE)
Jennifer Pesendorfer (AUT)
Kaleigh Quennec (SUI)
Sara Säkkinen (FIN)

Team Staff:
Coach: Oona Peltonen (FIN)
Coach: Yoko Kondo (JPN)
Coach: Ingvild Farstad (NOR)
Coach: Andrea Kröni (SUI)
Goalkeeper Coach: Patrick Borresen (NOR)
Video Coach: Tomas Jankovic (CZE)
Strength and Conditioning: Sofia Pohjanen (FIN)
Athletic Trainer: Marius Engen (NOR)
Equipment Manager: Terje Tendenes (NOR)

Canada Red

Goaltenders:
Nicole Cece
Marie-Pier Coulombe
Stephanie Neatby

Defencemen:
Codie Cross
Julia Edgar
Jalyn Elmes
Abagael Thiessen
Saroya Tinker
Kimberly Vigneault

Forwards:
Lindsay Agnew
Samantha Bouley
Jaedon Cooke
Grace Graham
Ryleigh Houston
Marika Labrecque
Amélie Lemay
Sheridan Oswald
Sabrina Repaci
Malia Schneider
Kristina Shanahan
Leona Sim
Tasza Tarnowski

Canada White

Goaltenders:
Ava Boutilier
Édith D’Astous-Moreau
Allison Small

Defencemen:
Mairead Bast
Jaime Bourbonnais
Tammy-Lee Corbeil
Victoria Howran
Olivia Knowles
Claire Thompson

Forwards:
Ashton Bell
Annie Berg
Rosalie Bégin-Cyr
Deziray De Sousa
Kayla Friesen
Anonda Hoppner
Sarah Lecavalier
Emma Maltais
Kristin O’Neill
Amy Potomak
Sophie Shirley
Daryl Watts

ROSTERS LAKE PLACID

Team IIHF

Goaltenders:
Ellen Jonsson (SWE)
Adriana Stofanikova (SVK)

Defencemen:
Jessica Adolfsson (SWE)
Amalie Andersen (DEN)
Lenka Curmova (SVK)
Lucia Drabekova (SVK)
Lotti Odnoga (HUN)
Nina Pirogova (RUS)
Marina Swikull (GER)

Forwards:
Yekaterina Dobrodeyeva (RUS)
Margarita Dorofeyeva (RUS)
Franziska Feldmeier (GER)
Zora Gottlibet (HUN)
Sara Hjalmarsson (SWE)
Kinga Jokai-Szilagyi (HUN)
Andrea Kollova (SVK)
Tatiana Korenkova (SVK)
Romana Kosecka (SVK)
Maria Peters (DEN)
Hanna Pinter (HUN)
Sorsa Sabus (GER)
Linn Thomsen (DEN)

Team Staff:
Coach: Tina Evers (GER)
Coach: Michaela Matejova (SVK)
Coach: Barbora Kezmarska (SVK)
Goalkeeper Coach: Ulf Werner (DEN)
Team Manager: Ulf Hall (SWE)
Video Coach: Martina Staronova (SVK)
Strength and Conditioning: Alexander Ulyankin (RUS)
Athletic Trainer: Michaela Giertlova (SVK)
Equipment Manager: Laszlo Medgyes (HUN)

Team USA

Goaltenders:
Morgan Fisher
Alex Gulstene
Beth Larcom

Defencemen:
Cayla Barnes
Grace Bowlby
Emily Brown
Skylar Fontaine
Nicole LaMantia
Makayla Langei
Patti Marshall
Gracie Ostertag
Abigail Stanley
Madeline Wethington

Forwards:
Sydney Brodt
Rebecca Gilmore
Matti Hartman
Taylor Heise
Gabrielle Hughes
Brooke Madsen
Presley Norby
Emily Oden
Andrea Renner
Caitlin Schneider
Kristina Schuler
Tatum Skaggs
Catherine Skaja
Natalie Snodgrass
Val Turgeon
Taylor Wente
Alex Woken
Grace Zumwinkle