“Girls don’t play hockey.”
That’s what Shelley Coolidge, head coach of the Carleton Ravens’ women’s hockey team, was told when she was growing up in the early 1980s. Coolidge said she tried to go to provincials with the boy’s team she was playing on, but Saskatchewan’s hockey association refused to allow her to play.
“For me as a young kid . . . it was a pretty harsh reality in the sport,” Coolidge said.
But since then, Coolidge said, the women’s hockey program has developed exponentially.
“When you go back to the situation I was at 35 years ago, there weren’t opportunities for girls to play. You could dream about being on a team where you’ve got your own dressing room,” Coolidge said. “It’s come so far.”
Although women’s hockey in Canada has taken great strides in the years since then, a recent scare at Saint Mary’s University is resonating in hockey arenas across the country as a stark reminder of the fragility of female sport. The varsity women’s hockey team at the university was nearly cut due to budget issues March 18, according to the CBC.
The initial decision prompted a March 22 rally outside the university, as well as an outpouring of support for the team across the country. Sidney Crosby’s parents and Hayley Wickenheiser were among those who showed their support, TSN reported.
As a result, SMU president Colin Dodds postponed the final decision until March 29, when the board of governors decided to reinstate the team. The CBC reported that Canadian Tire will contribute $60,000 to support the team.
Even though SMU’s team survived the scare, Coolidge said the state of women’s hockey is still precarious. The women’s hockey program at the University of New Brunswick was stripped of its varsity status in 2008, Coolidge said, and here in Ottawa, she said she has considered the possibility the same thing could happen to the Ravens program.
Although she noted that Ravens athletics are in a better “fiscal place” than SMU, Coolidge said she believes that the program needs more community support in order to ensure that cutting the program “is not something that’s even considered.”
Carleton’s director of recreation and athletics, Jennifer Brenning, said the varsity women’s hockey program is considered “a priority sport” at the university. The team receives over $100,000 in funding support from the athletics department each year, but that figure does not include athletic therapy or coaching salaries, Brenning said. She added the men’s varsity hockey program recieves about $40,000 more due to increased travel costs.
But Coolidge said the Ravens, as well as other athletic programs in Canadian Interuniversity Sport, need to build partnerships within their own universities in order to ensure teams have more support.
“The majority of the schools in the country have business programs,” she said, noting she would like to see those programs “partner with the athletics department and take a look at branding the sport and finding ways to sell the sport.”
But as the situation at Saint Mary’s proves, the decision whether or not to cut a team can come down to simply the numbers, regardless of the amount of community support a team has gained.
“If you take a look across the country, every school has a business reality,” Coolidge said. “They have to figure out how to balance their budget and if you take a look at women’s sport right now… we don’t have a huge fan base.”
“Tough decisions have to be made on campus, and the reality is all of us sit in that place.”
