CALGARY, Alta. – Hockey Canada’s National Teams’ Summer Showcase featuring 193 male and 86 female invitees to summer camps, kicks off today with Canada’s national under-17 development camp at the Markin MacPhail Centre at WinSport’s Canada Olympic Park in Calgary.

For the duration of the week-long camp, 110 players will be split into six teams for off-ice training, fitness testing, practices, intrasquad games, and classroom sessions. All practices and intrasquad games are free and open to the public.

In addition, all games hosted on rinks A and B – seven of the total nine scheduled intrasquad games for the under-17 group – will be webcast by FASTHockey available on the Hockey Canada website at www.hockeycanada.ca/U17Live.

From the camp, 66 players will be selected to represent Canada at the 2015 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge to be held from November 1 to 7 in Dawson Creek and Fort St. John, B.C.

The 2015 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge brings together the top players in the world born in 1999 or later. The under-17 program is the first step in Hockey Canada’s Program of Excellence. Many of the players chosen to compete at this level will then go on to represent Canada with the National Men’s Under-18 Team, National Junior Team and National Men’s Team.

For more information on the 2015 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge, please visit www.hockeycanada.ca/wu17 or follow along social media at www.facebook.com/worldu17 or www.twitter.com/hc_wu17.