RANT: Pucks over Pin Ups

Warning: ranting ahead! 

Back in January we celebrated the NHL lockout ending by taking Adri (and myself) to her first hockey game – the free scrimmages.

She loved every second of it; the cheering, doing ‘the wave’, the junk food, it was a great time! About halfway through the game she asked me “Mommy why are we watching the boy game? Where are the girls?” This caught me completely off guard. I think I said something along the lines of “It’s just boys today, next time we’ll watch the girls game”. She agreed that as much as she loved this game, next time definitely had to be a girl game. I posted it on Facebook, beaming over my 4 year old’s blossoming ideas over equality in sports, and promptly forgot about it.

Fast forward to this morning, and Daddy and Adri are setting out for the last scrimmage game. As they’re walking out the door Adri turns to me and asks “Mommy are we watching the girl game this time?” That kid has the memory of an elephant! I told her no, that the Canucks are all boys, and she was totally baffled. Where is the girl hockey?

I was determined not to forget this time, so once Aven was down for a nap I Googled “Women’s Hockey League Vancouver”. The first 2 posts were were not relevant – young girls ice and floor hockey sites. The 3rd was what I was looking for…..kind of. It was an adult women’s hockey team, but the post was all about their pin up calender. After some serious searching, that’s all I could find. Their own website has nothing but their pin up calender. The home page rotates the photos. The “about us” is literally JUST about the calendar. There is no ticket or schedule information. Their blog is only about the calendar. Their Twitter @Ice_O_Topes is about the calendar. All their media links are about the calendar. I literally could not find any information on how they play, watching them play, stats, nothing!

Please don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against pin up calenders. Especially ones raising money for great charities to get more women playing hockey, which is an expensive sport in an already expensive city. I am all for that. The calendar is very well done and super creative – a recreation of classic hockey moments. What prompted my rant is that I want to take my little girl to a women’s hockey game, and I can’t find anywhere to do that at any sort of competitive or advanced recreational level. I can very easily buy her a calender of half naked women’s hockey players though! Every search turned up more leads to this calender, but none to tickets, stats, player info, video footage, just calendar. Is this all this team is about? What if she had (perhaps at an older age) Googled this herself? Looking for hero’s, role models, examples of people to follow should she want to play hockey herself? And the only information she can find is pin up photos. Is that all that local Women’s Hockey is good for?

Tell me – am I crazy? Am I over reacting? And for the love of Hockey – where can I get my hands on some tickets for women’s hockey? Leave a comment and let me know!!