Hazelton and Smithers participated in the IIHF World Girls’ Hockey Weekend Long Game Initiative to raise awareness of girls’ hockey, on Saturday.
The event featured a continuous game from coast to coast, through every province, beginning at 3:30 a.m., PST in Newfoundland, and finishing at 2 p.m. in British Columbia on October 12.
In each province, four destinations were chosen, one for each level of girls hockey: atom, peewee, bantam and midget.
Once one game finished, the score was kept and carried over to the next game in the adjacent province.
When the peewee game finally finished in Hazelton, the score was tied at 28 apiece. The white team beat the red team 7-3 in Hazelton for a 35-31 final.
More importantly, the event drew family and friends out to the arena, and began the new girls hockey initiative in Hazelton off on the right foot.
Vice President of minor hockey in Hazelton, Ryneld Starr, helped organize the event as a kick-off for the new girls’ peewee team, which began play just a few weeks ago.
“We thought it would be a great way to start our girls’ team off,” Starr, whose daughter also plays on the team, said.
“We are really excited about it.”
The peewee girl’s team is the first in Hazelton's history.
It features 13 girls, between the ages of 10-13 and is coached by Max Stevens and two of the best womens’ players in town, Olivia Wolfenden and Natasha Tate.
“We don’t have a lot of girls that are interested, but we did have enough in these four age groups,” Starr added.
“And we hope that this will spur some interest so that we can create another girls’ team at a different age group in the future.”
The girls will host their first tournament on November 9-10.
In the surrounding area, Smithers, Terrace, Fraser Lake and Houston all have girls teams for the peewee’s from Hazelton to play against.
Hazelton won the opportunity to host the game by applying to BC Hockey when they found out about the event.
After Hazelton was approved to host B.C. portion of the peewee event, they invited Smithers to come and play against them.
The World Girls’ Ice Hockey Weekend is a global opportunity for girls to try out hockey as a new sport.
Thousands of participants across Canada took part in the 2011 World Girls’ Hockey Day and its successor, the World Girls’ Ice Hockey Weekend in 2012.
In addition to their normal campaigns to raise awareness of the day, the IIHF put social media to good use, asking everyone involved in the games to use hashtags like #PeeweeLongGame so people could keep track of the score.
Womens’ ice hockey is one of the fastest growing sports in the world thanks to programs like this one, that are being run in many countries.
For more information about getting involved in the program contact the Hazelton Minor Hockey Assocation.