Victus in the News: Aussies flocking to Kitchener hockey high school
This news article is from the Waterloo Region Record written by Josh Brown on February 19, 2025 and is reproduced below.
Georgia Watts could do without the Canadian winter.
“It’s so cold,” said the 16-year-old Australian. “I don’t like it very much.”
But the hockey? That’s a different story.
“It has been great,” she said. “I’ve really enjoyed it here. My game has definitely improved. I feel like a completely different player.”
That’s thanks to a bold move that has seen her, and several other Aussie teens, pack their gear and move across the world to Canada to train at Kitchener hockey high school Victus Academy, which runs out of the Sportsworld Arena.
“I wanted to expand my knowledge and get better and see where I can take my career … and coming to Canada was the start of that,” said Watts.
Hockey isn’t a sport most associate with Australia. The sport got its start Down Under more than a century ago and boasts a semi-pro men’s league and a women’s amateur league.
“It’s growing,” said Watts, who hails from Brisbane. “We have a small amount of rinks (two) where I’m from. There are only two teams. You play the same team every weekend and it gets a bit repetitive, but it’s still fun.
“If I tell people I play hockey (back home), they all assume it’s field hockey. You have to specify that it’s ice hockey and then they often ask how it works.”
Watts caught her first glimpse of the game when she was three.
She used to go to a public skate every Sunday and one afternoon there was a hockey game at the rink and she stayed to watch.
“I fell in love,” she said.
The winger says there is only one store in Brisbane that sells hockey equipment and ice time at arenas is limited, with one practice and game about every week. So, training almost daily at Victus Academy has been a boon.
Just south of Brisbane, in Gold Coast, there are three rinks. That’s where fellow Victus Academy student Hunter Boland grew up. The 17-year-old defenceman got hooked on hockey through trips to visit family in Germany.
“I was pretty young and the Christmas markets had little rinks,” he recalled. “I started skating there and really liked it a lot.”
Now, Boland and Watts are rising the ranks for Australia. Watts competed last month for the country’s under-18 side at the world championship in Poland. The team went 1-4 but edged Korea 2-1 in a shootout to avoid relegation and remain in Division B, Group 1, which is three levels behind the top championship tier. Watts scored in regulation and in the shootout to help her team win.
“That was a really stressful game and nail-biting until the end,” she said. “Representing your country is like nothing else. It’s something you can’t explain.”
Boland is headed to Bulgaria next month for the men’s U18 world championship, where he’ll battle the host nation along with Belgium, Serbia, Spain and Chinese Taipei for promotion out of Division 2, Group B.
“I think we’re getting a lot better,” he said. “There are a lot of kids from Australia going overseas to Canada now.”
Victus Academy has seven Aussies enrolled, as well as students from Canada, Germany, England and the Netherlands.
“We have an international flare to our school,” said president Matthew Schmidt. “Canada is still considered as the hockey capital of the world and a number of players want to come experience that type of play.”
Boland hopes to make the men’s national team and play semi-pro in Australia down the road. Watts has dreams of cracking the Professional Women’s Hockey League and continuing her climb with the national program, which is ranked 31st by the International Ice Hockey Federation.
“We are definitely getting better and improving,” she said. “I think it will take a few more years for us to take that next big step.”