Lorne Bremner says the idea behind Try Hockey Day is for girls who may have never played before to give the sport a shot – just like his daughter Rowan did when she was three.
“Eight years ago, she came out with a bunch of equipment that didn’t fit, flopped around a bit for an hour – and fell in love with the game,” recalled the Cochrane Minor Hockey Association coach. “That was it … she was gone. She’s the one that dug into it.”
Since Rowan is now 11 years old and a loyal member of the Cochrane Rockies Pee Wee team – there just might be something to Bremner’s theory that girls need to try hockey to find out if the country’s most popular sport will become their sport.
With that in mind, I decided to take him up on the challenge and give my own daughter, Lucy, the opportunity to give it a go for the very first time.
At seven years old, Lucy has limited experience on the ice. She takes a public spin with her dad now and again (in figure skates), and she sees her share of Cochrane Generals games while at her mama’s side for work.
But she’s never put stick to puck before. So with little more than a wing and a prayer, we signed in Sunday afternoon (along with about 65 other kids and their families) to the CMHA event at Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre. Bremner said Lucy was one of about 30 complete beginners who participated – more than he’s seen in the past, which signals good things for the sport.
“It tells me it’s gaining popularity,” he said. “It tells me we’re on the right path with what we’re doing.”
Sunday’s event was a well-oiled machine, with passionate hockey players and parents guiding the uninitiated along every step of the way. The first stop was the equipment room, where we learned there’s a mountain of material to manoeuvre long before anyone ever steps into the arena.
Once we collected two armfuls of gear, we headed to Dressing Room No. 8. There, more players were ready to help put on all the stuff I was carrying, but had no idea what to actually do with it all.
Lucy sat wide-eyed and quiet as Cochrane hockey stars Stephanie Gross and Kara Kondrat acted as her hockey handmaidens – strapping on her shin pads, shimmying her into shorts and securing a helmet around her chin.
Gross – a goalie for the Alberta Female Hockey League’s Midget AAA Rocky Mountain Raiders – said she remembered when she first started out, she was so small she had to lay face-down on the ground while her parents tied up her thick and cumbersome goalie pads.
“I thought it was the greatest thing ever,” recalled Gross with a smile.
A few more tugs and pulls and Lucy looked like a hockey player. Next, it was time to start acting like one – and she marched through the tunnel like a pro. Once her blades hit the blue line, though, it took a while to find her footing. Lucy bit the wintry dust more than a few times trying to follow her group of newbies through drills led by Cochrane Rockies players. Even figuring out how to hold a stick required effort and concentration.
Parents like me watched and winced from the sidelines as our kids slid into the boards, and we cheered when they eventually figured out the rhythm of the movements and we saw the looks of pride on their faces.
“We just wanted to get her out there … to give her different experiences,” said dad, Darren Thompson, as his five-year-old daughter, Abigail, worked her way around the ice.
Mom, Nicole Parks, said her daughter, Khloe, 5, first came to the sport last year at a try hockey day not unlike this one.
“She loved it,” Parks recalled while her daughter worked through a scrimmage. “She was barely standing up … and she said, ‘Let’s do it again.’ (So) we signed her up into hockey.”
After an hour of solid hockey, the tired freshies found their way back to the dressing room, stripped off their gear and talked about signing up for the next girls’ hockey day on April 8.
For her part, Lucy asked me to write down the date in my day planner before running off with her hockey-playing friend Katie Miller for a well-earned juice box. So it looks like Bremner’s challenge has been met after all...
Thirteen-year-old bantam elite player Bailey Fiala – who helped the girls throughout the day – said she loves this type of event “so the girls can see how fun hockey is.”
Gross agreed, saying she hoped the day gave kids like mine a chance to take a shine to shinny.
“I was really happy to hopefully teach them some skills and to love hockey,” Gross said. “You can see them: all smiles.”
