Scotford (Wallace), Jemma

BORN OCTOBER 19TH 1983 at Coffs Harbour on the north coast of New South Wales, she started skating in 2000 and learnt a lot from the Canadians at the Big Banana ice rink in Coffs Harbour owned by Kevin Ruby. "The Canadian ice hockey coach Wayne Bradford was living in Nambucca Heads at the time,” she said “and he took me under his wing." The 1.72m 80 kg defender, who played a lot of sports but found ice hockey the most addictive, also trained with the Coffs Coast Academy of Sport.

In 2004 she was chosen for the National Selects squad and represented Queensland in the 2004 Nationals at Canterbury after 5 years skating. She first represented Australia in ice hockey at the 2005 Worlds in Cape Town South Africa under the tutelage of Coach Kathy Berg. In 2006, she captained an Australian Select side on a tour of New Zealand.

By 2007 she was training with Chris Pett and playing with the Raptors in the ECSL. After pre-training camp in Japan, she helped the National Women’s Team win gold at the Worlds in England during Rocky Padjen’s first season as Head Coach. In rapid succession Australia took out South Africa, Hungary and tournament favourites Great Britain. The 8-2 defeat of Belgium and the 6-0 whitewash of Korea helped lift the team into Division Two.

She was a founding member of the Brisbane Goannas in 2007, one of the four foundation clubs of the AWIHL, and captain from 2012 to 2014. She represented Australia at the World Championships for the third and last time in the 2008 Women’s Worlds in Finland. In 2010, the IIHF Worlds for the lower divisions were not held, but she joined the NWT in an exhibition tour of Calgary.