Avery Diljee leads Novice Mustangs with over 100 goals this season

With just one minute and 48 seconds left in the third period of a Feb. 2 hockey game, Avery Diljee had her team and the crowd on the edge of their seats, hoping she would score her 100th goal of the season.

And she didn’t disappoint.

Avery is just eight years old but has played hockey for more than half her life and has been on the Grand River Mustangs Novice ‘B’ team for the past three years.

She started playing rep hockey at six, when the coach of the Novice team recruited her even though she was one year shy of the Novice age range of seven to eight-year-olds.

“It’s a big commitment,” said Kelly Diljee, Avery’s mom. “Rep is definitely a step up that we had to get used to.”

Now in her third and final year of Novice rep, Avery is the captain of her team and also the leading scorer, averaging two to three goals per game.

But that wasn’t always the case.

“I only scored one goal my first year,” Avery said, adding that in her second year she scored about 20.

Everything changed last summer, when Avery taught herself how to elevate her shots off the ground/ice.

“In novice usually if you have a girl who can raise the puck you can get a lot of goals,” Kelly explained. “And [Avery] realized in her second year playing that the girls on her team who were scoring all could raise the puck so she spent a lot of the summer down in the basement practicing how to raise the puck … this year she came out ready to go.”

Avery said raising the puck isn’t difficult for her, but there aren’t many players on her team who can say the same. For some, it’s their goal to learn the skill, Avery added.

Teaching herself how to raise the puck certainly increased Avery’s scoring average and even though she outscores her teammates and often other teams, she still receives support.

Grand River was playing North Halton the night Avery scored her 100th goal and even the opposing team was happy for her.

“Some of the North Halton players came up after the 100th-goal game and kind of gave her a high five and said ‘Great game number 16’,” Kelly said.

Avery’s own teammates jumped up from the bench and the players on the ice skated over to hug her and congratulate her on the impressive feat. Even before the shot was made one teammate was encouraging Avery so loudly that the spectators could hear.

“We could all hear her going ‘skate Avery skate Avery’ because she knew it was going to be the 100th if it went in,” Kelly said. “So it was pretty cute.”

Some of the sisters of Avery’s teammates created a “100” out of three bright yellow poster boards that they held up when she made the shot. Afterwards, all of the Mustang players signed the posters along with their jersey numbers.  

Even Avery’s middle brother, who’s just seven years old, knew the goal could be “it” and had his face pressed to the glass when she made the shot, Kelly said.

Getting to 100 goals in just 42 games wasn’t something the young hockey player was striving towards this season. In fact, Avery, Kelly and Avery’s dad Ryan didn’t know until a few weeks ago that it was even a possibility.

“We found out that she actually hit the 100 point mark before we knew anything about goals,” Kelly explained.

Another mom on the team was keeping track of the stats and brought it to Kelly and Ryan’s attention that Avery was just 11 goals short of reaching 100.

“So she started to really keep track and then we of course kind of knew from that point that [Avery] was close so we let her in on the stats page and showed her kind of where she was at,” Kelly said. “She was just, ‘I’m going to do it.’”

And do it she did.

Avery scored her 99th goal in the first period of the Feb. 2 game but then left spectators and her team in suspense, scoring the coveted 100th goal  with just under two minutes remaining in the game.

With her team now in the playoffs, Avery has a new goal.

“Close to 120 I think,” Avery replied when asked how many goals she thinks she could score this season.

She is already at 105 goals through 44 games.

“We’re super proud … You’ve got a good group of girls playing behind you; that’s why you can be so successful,” Kelly said to Avery.

 

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