LENNOXVILLE, Que. - It has been 93 weeks since it was announced that the Bishop's Gaiters women's hockey team would compete at the U SPORTS level in the Réseau du Sport Étudiant du Quebec (RSEQ) University Women's Hockey Conference. Despite a one year delay, the Gaiters are now ready for their inaugural season and will play their first-ever U SPORTS game in Ottawa on Friday versus the Carleton Ravens.

Sunday will be a historic day for the Gaiters as the team will compete in the Jane & Eric Molson Arena for the first time in a conference game for the 2021 home opener.

FRIDAY @ CARLETON
The Gaiters open their U SPORTS campaign on Friday against the Carleton Ravens at the Carleton Ice House at 7PM. The Ravens ended the 2019-20 campaign in fifth position with a 4-14-2-0 record. The Gaiters will look to start the season strong and show what Gaiters hockey is all about.

Game Coverage:
Score updates will be available on Twitter by following @BishopsGaiters and on Instagram at @gaiterswhk.

SUNDAY vs MONTRÉAL
The Jane & Eric Molson Arena will be the official home of the Gaiters and will be set for Sunday's historic home opener game when the Montréal Carabins travel to Lennoxville for a Halloween afternoon match-up at 3:30PM. Bishop's will aim to get their first-ever U SPORTS home win in front of a Gaiters' crowd. Single game and season tickets are available for purchase at www.gaiters.ca/tickets.

Game Coverage:
Watch Live: www.gaiters.ca/webcast
Twitter: @BishopsGaiters
Instagram: @bishopsgaiters & @gaiterswhk
 
THINGS TO KNOW
The RSEQ University Women's Hockey Conference is composed of six teams - the Bishop's Gaiters, the Carleton Ravens, the Concordia Stingers, the McGill Martlets, the Montréal Carabins and the Ottawa Gee-Gees. The Concordia Stingers finished the 2019-20 regular season atop the RSEQ standings with 32 points from 20 games but bowed out in the semi-finals losing 2 games to 1 to the Montréal Carabins. The McGill Martlets were the 2019-20 RSEQ Champions defeating Montréal 4-2 and 4-1 in the conference final. The 2020 U SPORTS Women's Hockey Championship, hosted by UPEI, was cancelled due to COVID-19.

This season, each team will play a 25-game regular season, matching up with each opponent five times over the next five months.
The Gaiters' roster is comprised of student-athletes across the country including Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The 2021 roster is available here. The captain for the Bishop's Gaiters this season is fifth-year senior, Jessica Bélanger, and her two alternates are Angélique Pagé and Marie-Camille Théorêt.
 
QUOTES

Bishop's Gaiters Head Coach, Dominic Desmarais

On the long wait to this season...
We've spent a long time waiting and the excitement is there. We've played five exhibition games in the preparation for this weekend. The team is ready to start something real and cannot wait to start a great chapter.

On evaluating this season..
We are a young team and expect there to be peaks and valleys. From an evaluation standpoint, we're most focused on how we play and want to compete every night, regardless of the result. The team chemistry is starting to flow and we're all excited to see where this season takes us.