Skip to content

Celebrating girls in hockey

Players in the Hub laced up for an hour of drills and scrimmage play on Saturday afternoon as part of a Canada-wide movement to celebrate girls and women in the sport.
26852196_web1_211020-HAY-WomenHockey-WomenHockey_2
Emanuelle Poitras makes a leap over a raised stick drill as coaches Alexa Rowe and Courtney Frase look on. Simon Whitehouse/NNSL photo

Players in the Hub laced up for an hour of drills and scrimmage play on Saturday afternoon as part of a Canada-wide movement to celebrate girls and women in the sport.

More than 20 players participated in the World Girls Hockey hour at the Aurora Ford Arena Oct. 16.

Courtney Fraser, one of the organizers of the event said Hay River takes part in the hockey event every year as it is a promotion by the International Hockey Ice Hockey Federation.

She said it is important for the town to take part because there is no separate female hockey league and girls have to play with boys which can be challenging as they grow older.

“We held the event to hopefully encourage female hockey players to stick with hockey and to show that you can play hockey throughout your life and all the way up until you’re however old as a recreational activity,” she said.

Fraser said female players can be discouraged as they get older because the game changes as physical bodies mature and male players become more aggressive.

“I think the significance of yesterday was that it was a day just for the girls because there is no female hockey teams in Hay River and that can be kind of tough and kind of intimidating for girls to be playing with the boys.

“Once we hit about the Peewee or Bantam age, which is about 14 years old, that’s when we start to lose girls in hockey because the boys get bigger and it gets a little intimidating and it gets scary.”

For the first 30 minutes of the hour, Fraser helped coach U7, U9 and U11 girls with some drills at one end of the ice while Tod Ashton did the same for the U13, U15 and U18 girls did the same at the other end.

In the last half hour, all female players joined to play against the Hay River’ women’s team.

A good range of players participated from girls as young as five to as old as 15 took part.

Organizers also had Hay River women’s hockey local celebrity Bryn Hill help with Saturday’s event. Hill has a hockey career of playing in four Arctic Winter Games and playing at the university level in Calgary after growing up in Hay River and developing her hockey skills against boys.

“So we had Bryn just say a few words to the girls to kind of encourage them to stick with hockey and to let them know that it’s a great game and a fun game,” Fraser said.