Women hockey players in the Yukon will have the opportunity to sign up to play in a league of their own, which the Whitehorse Women's Hockey Association hopes to get going for the coming 2008-09 season.

The organization plans to begin advertising the league as early as August and will be looking into possible sponsorship over the summer months.

"I think that it's a nice step forward for recreational women's hockey up here," said Anna Pugh, the president of the Whitehorse Women's Hockey Association.

"It's exciting to see women who have by in large played hockey as children, but we are all keen enough to keep finding ways to improve the amount of time we have to play and what the quality of that time is."

The thought of a women's hockey league has only recently come about in the past season and has been 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, another program was introduced titled Learn to Skate, which was geared towards people who needed to learn fundamental skating skills before moving onto aspects of the game such as stick handling and puck drills.

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 program that saw a record number of participation this season was the weekly drop in.

The drop-in features an actual game between two sides, which includes three 20 minute periods with a running clock.

Due to the increased numbers, the drop-in program had to be switched from Wednesday, which was also when the Learn to Play program was held to Thursday.

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

This year 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 somewhere between eight and 12 players.

League registration will be open to women who are 14 or older and the association is hoping to have enough participation to form four teams.

Teams would preferably have three forward lines, two lines for defense and a goalie, but this could change depending on the final numbers.

The Whitehorse Women's Hockey Association also hopes to have both games played on the same night every week.

No ice times have been announced yet for the two rinks at the Canada Games Centre, so an actual day of the week hasn't been determined.

If the league is created it would take the place of the drop-in program, but the Whitehorse Women's Hockey Association would still continue to run both the Learn to Play and Lean to Skate camps.

Pugh said there are still obstacles that may prevent the league from forming.

"I think the final obstacle and really the proof of whether Whitehorse is ready for a league is whether or not we have enough people," she said.

"We are hoping that some really experienced players that haven't played in a while might start coming out again.

Then also just generating interest with people who have never tried it before and are willing to come out and try it and have a few laughs.

We are really hoping we have all ranges of skill.

We don't want it to be something where people can only come out if they have played games before, we want it to be something where people can learn.

Other than that I think the only other obstacle will be consistency of numbers. Keeping people coming out all year and that is something all sports up here suffer from.

There are sort of ups and downs in turnout."

Pugh said despite the obstacles she is confident that the league will get going in the fall.

"Any other league creation, that I have ever been involved in, there is usually more concern from participants of the start about the what if's and the how will this work?" she said.

"Whereas with this it is has just been met with so much enthusiasm and that is really exciting to see.

We all sort of have confidence in ourselves that we are going to be able to run it as a league that's more so people can practice playing hockey rather than to think they are becoming NHL all-stars or something."

She said there are a lot of benefits to having a women's hockey league in the community.

"One of the big benefits I think is to introduce women who maybe didn't play team sports as kids to team sport playing," Pugh said.

"To introduce women to a sport that maybe a lot of their sons are playing right now or their husbands have played for years and their daughters too."

Pugh credits the creation of the Canada Games Centre to one of the reasons for making this possible.

"I think probably what makes it possible to have the interest is that we have been able to get ice time that works for women because of the fact that we now have three arenas up here," she said.

"Probably in the past that wasn't as possible, so that has been one of the nice things about the Canada Games Centre."