Table Tennis Yukon has had trouble lately getting female players to give the sport a shot.

So TTY president Dave Stockdale is taking a proactive approach, getting the word out that there is plenty of room for girls born in '94 or '97 interested in competing in the 2012 Arctic Winter Games to be held in Whitehorse from March 4-10.

"It looks like I might have a team from '97; I've been working some younger girls over the winter and there are three or four there that have come through if they don't go into figure skating or something else we might have a team there. I'm quite optimistic about that age group, but the older ones, I'm hoping to get some of the high school kids,” Stockdale said.

The age group for the 2012 Games is U14 and U17.

TTY is looking to fill both age groups with two girls and two boys.

Stockdale is keeping his fingers crossed that girls will commit, starting with the AWG table tennis trials at Whitehorse Elementary School on Saturday.

Registration starts at 1:30 in the afternoon and the trials begin at 2, with a $5 fee.

"We're hoping we can get a good turn out this weekend and start formulating a squad,” Stockdale said, conceding that the long weekend is a poor time to hold the trials.

"It won't be the last opportunity.”

He's also looking to coordinate a training camp in June with former national team coach Marles Martin, who visited in January to help prep the boys Canada Winter Games team.

Martin is also the current development manager for Table Tennis Canada.

Stockdale said he thinks he can get Martin to bite.

"He said he'd like to come back because he likes fishing,” he laughed.

Stockdale noted that the camp would accomplish three goals: intense training for the experienced, experience for the up-and-comers and an advanced coaching clinic.

Thirteen coaches attended the January clinic.

And the boys are looking strong for the Arctic Games.

Stockdale pointed out that since there is no squash at the Games, a few of those players may return to table tennis.

To date, the girls have been a different story.

"The girls seem to be weak across the board at the Arctic Winter Games; there weren't many full contingents of girls at the Games last time,” Stockdale said of the 2010 Arctic Winter Games held in Grande Prairie, Alta., in which TTY failed to field a girls team.

"It's always a bit of a struggle. We're always working with the bare minimum. The unfortunate thing is when you're only looking for two athletes (per age group), it's not like you're looking for a team and you get a lot of people.”

The 2010 Games were the first time the Yukon failed to have a girls' team in 40 years, Stockdale said.

"It just shocked me. The juvenile boys swept everything they were in.”

They also failed to draw girls to the sport for the 2011 Canada Winter Games in Halifax, N.S., in February, a massive disappointment for Stockdale, who set that goal when Whitehorse hosted the 2007 Games.

He noticed that New Brunswick also failed to have a girls table tennis team when it hosted the Canada Games in 2003.

"And I thought, ‘That's not going to happen in the Yukon.' But unfortunately we only managed to get a boys team there and not really a girls team,” Stockdale said.

He's hoping that with Whitehorse hosting the 2012 Arctic Games, there will be a bigger draw for young players looking to take part.

There is always the issue of players not wanting to commit because of travel.

"On the other side, kids are excited about travelling to a new place, so sometimes it's an incentive, because it's going to be in Greenland or something like that, kids are interested to get there. So it works both ways.”

Stockdale said that when adults used to compete in the AWG before 1980, the Yukon used to have 16 players on each team, compared to eight now.

Table Tennis Yukon will hold the Yukon Championships on April 30th to May 1st.

From May 6th-7th, TTY will compete with Fairbanks in the Alaska Challenge. In July, Toronto will host the National Championships.