His Western Hockey League career may have come to a close, but the final chapter has yet to be written in the hockey career of Ashton Ferster.
It was announced on Thursday that the Shellbrook product has committed to the University of Saskatchewan Huskies for the 2024-25 season.
Ferster will utilize his WHL scholarship after spending parts of four seasons in the league split between the Medicine Hat Tigers and Kamloops Blazers.
For each season a player spends in the WHL, they are awarded with one year of post-secondary scholarship to any institution in Canada. The scholarship covers tuition, compulsory fees and required textbooks.
Ferster says the option of having the WHL scholarship available to him was very beneficial.
“I’m definitely very fortunate. I’ve got that scholarship money going into my university. (It) gives me the opportunity to go with a little bit extra money and come out hopefully debt free out of university.”
When he arrives on campus in September, Ferster will study to receive his diploma in agribusiness. He says he is taking that area of study because he plans to help out on the family farm in the coming years.
“I’m going into Agribusiness because my family farm’s up in Shellbrook and I’m planning on farming with my dad here in the next few years. I’m going to go learn the business side of agriculture because it is a really important part of it.”
In his final WHL campaign, Ferster recorded career highs with 19 goals and 22 assists in 68 games played for the Blazers. Kamloops failed to reach the postseason posting a 20-42-3-3 record, finishing last in the Western Conference standings.
Although it was a trying year for the Blazers, Ferster says he made lifelong memories with the team.
“Obviously not how you want to end the year. Everyone wants to make the playoffs, but it’s still a very fun time. Learned lots of lessons. (It was a) young team rebuilding after a great run at it last year. Lots of memories, lots of great friends along the way. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Serving as one of the three twenty-year-old players on the Kamloops roster, Ferster served in the Blazer leadership group wearing an ‘A’ for the team.
“I remember being a young guy and older guys kind of leading the way.” Ferster says. “It’s my turn now to do the same thing. We might have had a few younger guys than when I came up in the league. But I think by the end of the year, we kind of found our rhythm. In the next years there, they got lots of promise there. They were starting to go the right way so hopefully they can continue on.”
Ferster and the Blazers got the chance to face some of the best competition that junior hockey has to offer when Kamloops hosted the 2023 Memorial Cup.
Ferster was one of the Blazers acquisitions ahead of the tournament as they made an early season move to acquire him from the Medicine Hat Tigers in exchange for an eighth round pick in 2025.
Looking back at his entire junior hockey career, Ferster says his first season in Kamloops with the deep playoff run and opportunity to compete in the Memorial Cup are amongst his best memories with the sport.
“There’s lots of memories, lots of good ones, but the ones I always look at are the Memorial Cup ones, and then that playoff run we had last year with that team and how good we were and all the wins we had and made it really special and really fun.”
Ferster also spent parts of three seasons with the Prince Albert Mintos prior to breaking into the WHL.
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