WOMEN-IN-HOCKEY Digest 368

Topics covered in this issue include:

  1) referees in women's hockey and other growing pains
	by email@hidden (Karen Kane)
  2) Re: Men's vs. Women's Hockey
	by email@hidden
  3) US vs Canada
	by "Elmer A. Laydon" 

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Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 02:38:42 -0700
From: email@hidden (Karen Kane)
To: email@hidden
Subject: referees in women's hockey and other growing pains
Message-ID: 

I am the President of the Southern Alberta Women's Hockey Association
(SAWHA), I play on a team in our league and I am also a registered official,
so I get to see the sport of hockey from many perspectives. In the next few
paragraphs, I'll try to give you a brief overview of what we're doing here
and how we're dealing with officiating. If anyone would like to send me
their histories, that's the kind of thing I'd be interested in (use my
e-mail address: email@hidden).

We have 17 teams in our adult league now (2 of them are Midget Girls: aged
17 and under), however just 6 or 7 years ago, we were struggling to keep 8
teams going. Most of our teams are located in the City of Calgary, with a
few rural participants. Also, the Minor Hockey Association of Calgary has
two divisions of all girls teams that play in their own leagues: 1)5 PeeWee
teams (ages 12-13) and 2)5 Bantam/Midget teams (ages 14-17). There are also:
1 all girls Novice team (ages 7-9) and 2 all girl Atom teams (ages 10-11)
that play in non-contact boys divisions. We have had many obstacles and
challenges to face as we grow, officiating has been one of the issues.

Quality officiating is a more of an issue with the adult teams, and,
unfortunately, I must referee in boys/mens hockey leagues because there is a
conflict of interest between playing and officiating in the same league.
However, I do get to referee some of the girls hockey being played in Calgary. 

We have found that developing a dialogue with our local referees association
(especially the assignors) and maintaining it over the past several years
has been most helpful. Certainly we have identified individual officials who
disrespect the female player, and they have been banned from our hockey. In
extreme cases, they may even be suspended from working their "prized" male
hockey. But we have also been able to identify individual officials who have
mutual respect with the players, and we are currently developing a group of
core officials, created by our request, which are being assigned to work
most of our games. It has been worth the time investment.

One of the messages that seems to need repeating to various officials: "Once
we put our equipment on, don't consider us as men or women/girls or boys -
JUST CONSIDER US AS HOCKEY PLAYERS - Life is easier that way". (This is
especially true when the language deteriorates - Can women talk like that??)

We are experimenting with a three-man referee system this year. It costs $8
more than the two-man, but psychologically it may be worth it. In Calgary,
two-man officiating is generally regarded as "beer-league", while three-man
officiating is "real-hockey". We'll know in a few months whether or not this
change helps. 
We are also lucky in Calgary that we have over 300 registered officials and
our adult league requires a core group of 30-40 individuals, so we really
can deal with only 10-15% of the officials in our area (this means we don't
have to deal with the other 85%!).

Out of the 300+ officials, about 12 are female, some of them only 13 or 14
years old. The adult women officials who are not playing on a team (about 4
of them) get preference for doing the games in our league - it generally
works very well.

Other growing pains, that can be topics of other discussions include: the
availability of ice at reasonable times (same issue for men, but they don't
tend to be nursing infants, or making lunches for school-kids, etc....);
internal politics (sometimes we create more problems for ourselves....); the
rival sport of ringuette (in Calgary ringuette is big, but it's growth is in
the 30-40 year old age bracket, while hockey is attracting the younger 20-25
year olds); stereo-type images (what kind of girl/woman plays hockey
anyway?); and other general misconceptions (do you use a real puck?, do you
take slapshots? DO WOMEN DO THAT? - Although this one's pretty much been
answered by the fact that we're going to Nagano).

Anyways, before I take up another 600 pages - see y'all later

Karen Kane


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Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 18:47:02 -0500
From: email@hidden
To: email@hidden
Subject: Re: Men's vs. Women's Hockey
Message-ID: 

FYI, Lisa, until we find good women's skates ... I finally found my fit (11
narrow) in Bauer, which ran a bit slimmer than my old CCMs. I'm pretty
comfortable in a 7 1/2 Bauer Comp, which was expensive, but worth it for the
interior ankle-conforming padding. Also, contrary to tradition, I don't wear
a thin sock. After a summer's experimentation, I find a lightweight Thor-Lo
(the jogging or walking version) and careful lacing gives me a little more
side-to-side security without cramming my toes, and I don't use wads of tape
around my ankle any more.

Good luck!

Margaret Lillard
Brooklyn Blades


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Date: Sun, 03 Nov 1996 20:37:10 -0800
From: "Elmer A. Laydon" 
To: email@hidden
Subject: US vs Canada
Message-ID: 

I was able to pick up the US vs Canada game off of one of the Canadian 
satellites Saturday afternoon. It was a good game - especially 
enjoyable since six players from the Polar Bears are on the US team. It's 
just too bad that no US broadcaster picked it up. I think this would have 
gone a long way towards giving womens/girls hockey more recognition in 
the US.

Elmer Laydon 
Connecticut Polar Bears
http://www.iconn.net/elaydon/bears.htm

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End of WOMEN-IN-HOCKEY Digest 368
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