Registration still ongoing for women’s hockey league

It has been a long time coming, but this year Whitehorse's hockey community will include the addition of a women's league.

It has been a long time coming, but this year Whitehorse’s hockey community will include the addition of a women’s league.

The Whitehorse Women’s Hockey League will begin mid-October and will feature two games each week throughout its 23-week season.

Presently, 40 players are registered to play in the four-team league.

“It’s fantastic that we already have enough people to run the league and registration hasn’t even ended, so that’s great,” said Anna Pugh, the president of the Women’s Hockey Association.

“Our goal was to have enough to have 10 people at least per team and so we are happy we are already at that point, but we are still taking some registrations.”

The thought of a women’s hockey league has only recently come about in the past season and was a result of increased numbers in all three of the weekly programs run by the Whitehorse Women’s Hockey Association.

The weekly camps began with the Learn to Play program, which started in 2005 and taught the basics of the sport.

The following year, the Learn to Skate program was introduced, which was geared towards people who needed to learn fundamental skating skills before they moved onto more advanced aspects such as puck handling.

Both programs made for a more efficient set up for the hockey association by helping it solve any conflicts about not knowing what to teach on a given night.

This past season both programs were filled with the maximum 25 participants in each before the conclusion of fall registration.

Another weekly clinic that saw a record number of participants in 2007-08 was the Drop-in Program.

The Drop-in Program featured an actual game between two sides, which included three 20 minute periods, with a running clock.

Due to the increased numbers the Drop-in Program had to be switched from Wednesday to Thursday nights.

The drop-in program was also extended an extra half hour in order to ensure players got enough ice time.

In 2007-08, the program featured at least 15 players per side, which was an increase from the previous year when a team was lucky if they ended up with eight to 12 players.

The Women’s Hockey Association will still continue to offer both the beginner and intermediate clinic. The beginner clinic will be held on Wednesday nights, while the intermediate will be every Monday evenings.

Games in the women’s league will include three 20-minute periods with a running clock. League registration is presently ongoing and is open to women who are 14 years old and up.

Presently, there is no cutoff for the total number of registration spots, however Pugh said the most players on an individual team in the women’s league would be 15.

She said ideally there would be 12 players per team and that the league could create another team if the numbers were high enough.

Interested individuals can sign up by dropping off the registration at 604 Alexander Street or come down to the Roadhouse Friday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Friday will be the last day for early bird registration and Oct. 1 will be the final day to register for the upcoming season.

There is a $50 jersey deposit fee, which would be returned at the end of the season. The cost to register is $350 after the early bird deadline.

The women’s league schedule will include each team playing one game a week on either Wednesday or Thursday. All games will be played at the Canada Games Centre.

Pugh said the association was hoping to get the necessary numbers required to form four teams.

“We knew that the numbers of women out there wanting to play hockey were there,” she said.

“We were just hoping people would be as enthusiastic as we were about the idea of the league rather than just the pickup games and it seems to be that that’s the case. We have had people who have never played in our pickup games before, but are now joining to play in the league, so that’s nice to see too.”

Pugh said she credits the early registration success to the clinics and programs that have been offered the past few years by the Whitehorse Women’s Association.

“The fact that we have had pickup hockey for the last, probably, three years and these learn to play clinics for I think about three years as well. So just a combination of getting to play games and learning at the clinics about skills.”