Growing the game

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This article was published 20/12/2024 (278 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a recent Friday afternoon and the Century Arena is humming — the newest entry to the Winnipeg Women’s High School Hockey League is taking on the old guard.

The stands are nearly packed as the Warren Wildcats face off against the Vincent Massey Trojans, one of the league’s four original teams when it was created in 1996.

The Wildcats, in their inaugural season, comprises of students from three other rural high schools: Teulon Collegiate, St École Communautaire Aurèle-Lemoine and St. Laurent School. Their entry into the league is a reflection of a national trend — girls playing hockey in Canada is at an all-time high.

Putting a team together in Warren gave some players, like 17-year-old Jadyn Baldwin, the opportunity to play for their high school before they graduate in the spring.

“It’s been a really fun experience,” Baldwin said. “Getting to play with people from different grades and kids younger than me that I wouldn’t otherwise get to play with is super cool.”

Interest in girls’ hockey is booming, thanks in part to the creation the PWHL, the Professional Women’s Hockey League. However, the Manitoba league has seen steady growth since its inception.

Now in its 26th season, the league features 28 teams across three divisions and includes more than 450 players. It also has a different name, Manitoba Women’s High School Hockey League, to reflect its growth across the province.

Wildcats team manager Michelle Riddell, who’s also overseeing the school’s boys team, said icing a girls team was an idea that had been discussed for more than two years.

“We had lots of parents and the community interested in putting a team together because they saw the excitement the boys team brought to the community,” Riddell said.

Knowing the numbers from Warren’s school of 180 students wouldn’t be enough, Riddell presented the co-op plan to the Manitoba High Schools Athletic Association. Approval was granted in April.

“It was an amazing feeling — I couldn’t believe it was happening because we had talked about it for a long time, but many people said it wouldn’t be possible,” Riddell said. “I had messaged a few parents of the girls that would be on the team — one of the mothers was crying, and I just got goosebumps.”

With players in grades 9 through 12, Baldwin said one of the biggest priorities she and her teammates have is growing the sport within their school and community.

“Many of the kids younger than us look up to our hockey team and know they can play hockey in school too now,” she said.

MWHSHL president Brad Nechwediuk said what makes high school hockey unique is that it provides an entry to girls who may not have had much connection to the sport at an earlier age.

“We grow the game more than anybody at the late stages before these girls turn adults,” Nechwediuk said. “Every year we bring in a handful of players who have very little experience playing hockey.”

That is why the league has three divisions, where players range from house league to AAA-level. The players who have limited experience are developed within the three to four years of high school and typically turn out to be quality players who are “hooked on the sport for life,” Nechwediuk said.

The MWHSHL growth has also benefited from the Hockey Winnipeg all-girls U9 division, which began around 2011, where seven- and eight-year-olds had their own division mixed together with some six-year-olds.

“That was a game changer because now you’ve got more girls playing with girls at a young age, separated from the boys,” Nechwediuk said.

The expansion of girls’ hockey in Manitoba is also not just limited to high school. Hockey Manitoba’s minor leagues have experienced an upward trend.

This season, the total number of rostered female athletes in Hockey Manitoba’s minor hockey system (ages U7-U18) is 5,124. Last year, that number was 4,917, and, in 2022, it was significantly less at 4,637. Across Canada, there were 108,313 women and girls registered to play hockey in 2023-24, representing an all-time high of 19.9 per cent of all registrants.

Hockey Manitoba manager of operations Dustin Stewart said the extension of programs offered is the biggest reason provincial growth in the female game has been so rapid.

“Previously when we go back to the 2010s, the only programming we offered in Manitoba was our U18 high-performance program, but now we actually have branch-led programs that operate at U18, U16 and U13,” said Stewart. “The numbers have just continued to trend up.”

Previously, playing for Team Canada was the ultimate goal for young female athletes. The PWHL now creates more opportunities at the elite level.

“The opportunity to see women playing the game at a professional level where they are being compensated in a way that allows them to make hockey a career is a game changer,” Stewart said.

“It just changes the dream for many of them because there’s a legitimate chance for girls to potentially end up playing professional hockey in a women’s league that is aired nationally on TV.”

Oakbank’s Kati Tabin, a defender with the PWHL’s Montreal Victoire, is currently living that dream.

“It’s still a shock everyday that we get to do this for a living,” said Tabin. “I never would have even dreamed this would be a reality because it wasn’t.”

Women’s hockey never even existed when Tabin grew up in the province. She said her older brother played and she wanted to follow in his footsteps, so she played boys minor hockey.

For Tabin and many others, there was no NHL equivalent to dream of for girls at a young age, so she is grateful the moment has arrived.

“Little girls have us to look up to now,” said Tabin. “It opens up so many more doors, and little girls can now dream of being a pro when they’re older if that’s what they choose to do.”

“It’s insane to think about this league (PWHL) and how far the female game has come — so many female athletes stuck with it, playing for zero dollars to $2,000 to get us where we are today,” she said.

Before the PWHL was founded in August 2023, young players such as Baldwin never had the opportunity to dream of playing in a league where you could make a career out of hockey.

“I think it’s really cool that now we can turn on our TVs and watch women play hockey — it encourages young women to continue playing hockey not just for fun, but that it could also turn into something down the road,” Baldwin said.