For many girls, growing up playing hockey means at some point, whether you like it or not, you will be forced to play against the boys.
Well, the North Bay Girls Hockey Association is helping to change that.
This summer President Bill Houlder along with Coach and Communications Director Dan Dorval reached out to Sturgeon Falls and Sudbury in hopes of creating a New Competitive Girls Hockey League.
“It has always been the hope in Girls Hockey that we would have competitive girls leagues,” said Dorval.
“About seven or eight years ago we had some success with a couple of house league loops but that sort of petered out when people moved up with their daughters and became engaged in rep hockey.”
After a lot of hours of organizing Dorval says they came up with a plan through the NDHL to create the NDHL Competitive Girls Hockey League which will have all its games based out of St. Charles.
The Bantam-Midget league includes the North Bay Bantam B Ice Boltz, the North Bay Midget C Ice Bolts, the West Nipissing Midget C Sting, the Sudbury Bantam B Lady Wolves, and the Sudbury Bantam BB Lady Wolves.
The teams, which started in early October, will play a 20-game schedule centralized out of the St. Charles arena on the weekends.
Dorval says in the past these girls teams were forced to play house league boys competition. which didn’t help their development.
“What happens is the girls compete at a level similar to the boys but the girls are playing system hockey and pass well, whereas the boys rely on strength and speed and one or two kids who can carry them,” said Dorval.
“So the girls don’t get to practice what we would call team hockey against those boys teams so we kind of put our heads together to see how to make this happen.”
Dorval is optimistic the league will continue to grow potentially even bringing in more teams from the North from as far away as Timmins and Sault Ste. Marie.
“There are lots of opportunities to grow this so it becomes an annual thing and not just something the three of us put together for one year, we are hoping this continues on for many years,” said Dorval.
