Canadian field hockey team stuck in South Africa trying to find its way home

Ajuniorfield hockey team from Canada stranded in South Africa ishoping to come back home by the end of the week after the newly discovered coronavirusvariant named omicron spurred globaltravel restrictions and cancelled flights to the region.

Thenew potentially more transmissiblevirus was first identified in South Africa.On Friday, the Canadian government announcedall foreign nationals who have travelled through South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho,Eswatinior Mozambiquein the last 14 days will be barred from entering Canada.

Canadian nationals and citizens are stillallowed to return home under the new rules, but travel has become much more onerous with many commercial carriers cutting flights and putting new testing and quarantine measures in place.

The team, which includes 14 women from B.C., had flown toSouth Africa to train and compete at the International Hockey Federation (FIH) Women's Junior World Cuptaking place inPotchefstroom from Dec.5 to 16.

On Friday, the tournament was postponed because of the omicron variant. Teams from the U.K. and Europe would have been unable to participate because of the travel restrictions.

Sue Goddard's twodaughters, Nora, 20, and Arden, 18, of Metro Vancouver are part of theteam stranded in South Africa. All of the team's players are under 21.

"At that time, the borders and flights down to South Africa started to shut down and they found out pretty quickly that they had no way of getting home," Goddard said Monday.

Major disappointment

Nancy Mollenhauer, the team's manager, said it was incredibly disappointing for the team, particularly afterwinningthe gold medal at the Junior Pan American Games in Chile earlier this year, that they would not get to play.

"It's a huge deal. For a junior athlete, at this point, it's the pinnacle of their career," Mollenhauer said.

Goddard saidthe team's focussoon switched to how they were getting home.

"Initially all the girls were devastated and they were just focused on the fact that they had all literally trained and worked for this for years and it wasn't happening," she said. "Then there was quite a bit of anxiety from everyone about how they were going to get home."

Goddard said South Africanand Canadian officials have been supporting the team and working hard to get them home.

"The university that they're staying at has taken extraordinarily wonderful care of them," she said. "We were never worried about their physical safety, just anxious to get them back on planes and back to Canada."

Field Hockey Canada CEO Susan Ahrens says that could soon be a possibility. She saysthe team has secured a route back on Dec.8, but is looking at coming back even earlier on Dec.3.

For now, Mollenhauersays the team is taking things day-by-day.

"We're here. We're safe. We're being well looked after and we know that we're in good hands here in South Africa and also at home," she said.