By Jonathan Brown
Eleven-year-old Grace Adair is making quite the impression on the local ice hockey scene. Grace, from Annacloy, is the only girl on the Belfast Junior Giants U-12 team and has now been selected for the Ireland Saints minor team for the SEDMHA tournament in March.
This latest achievement comes off the back of her recent selection by Ice Hockey Scotland to play for the Scotland 2014 squad, after impressing at a series of National Development Days held at the end of last year.
The Cedar Integrated Primary School pupil trains at Dundonald Ice Bowl on Monday and Tuesday evenings, and regularly travels to Scotland at weekends with her mum Zoe and dad Steven to play games, as her Giants team competes in the Junior Scottish Ice Hockey League.
Grace also plays roller hockey for Ballymena Norstar and has attracted interest from the Manchester Storm Women to play on their U-12 team, as well as from the Irish Ice Hockey Association, who have approached her about playing for the Ireland ladies’ side when she turns 16.
What makes Grace’s rise even more impressive is the fact that she only took up ice hockey in April 2024 after attending a Belfast Giants ‘Learn to Play’ session at the SSE Arena. Having never stepped foot on an ice rink before, the Cedar IPS pupil impressed coaches so much during her initial training sessions that she bypassed the Junior Giants U-10 side and was integrated straight into the U-12 team.
“I used to watch a lot of ice hockey movies and I started to take a real interest in it once I started playing. Playing with the Giants is really fun and I learn a lot every time I go there,” Grace said.
Grace, who said she was “happy and excited” when she received the news of her selection for the Ireland Saints team in March, already has ambitions of making a career out of ice hockey. She was inspired by the Friendship Four tournament held recently at the SSE Arena, which featured the ladies’ teams of four US universities — Boston University, Harvard University, Quinnipiac University, and the University of Minnesota-Duluth — competing for the Belpot Trophy. She also had the opportunity to meet some of the Boston Terriers players.
“I want to go to university in America or Canada and do a scholarship when I’m older,” Grace explained.
Alongside her ice hockey achievements, Grace has also become something of a social media star. Her Instagram page, @gracelightning70, has gained more than 1,000 followers after she appeared in a promotional video with BarSouth Sports — a specialist hockey shop and sportswear provider based in Belfast — which went viral in December.
