Representation and the PWHL

Last week, I made it to my first Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) game. I have seen previous women’s games, but this game was important to me for many reasons.

1) The fellow fans: when season tickets went on sale, a whole gang of my friends signed on. Some are women friends who play or just love hockey, some are women friends who are learning about the game and want to support women doing sports, some are feminist men friends who want to support the league. Plus more than 8,000 other people who fill the arena to capacity every single game.

2) The excited girls and women watching their idols play: a huge proportion of the fans is female-presenting. Entire girls’ hockey teams are getting on buses and coming to watch. Those big screen shots almost always show young girls dancing in their team jerseys, or showing off signs cheering for favourite players or the entire Ottawa team. I’m not a huge fan of the city’s plans to tear down and rebuild the arena, but I seriously reconsidered it after standing in the very long line for the women’s washroom. The place was not designed for so many female fans!

3) More specific representation on the ice: Akane Shiga, a member of the Japanese national team and the only visible minority player I spotted, had her own fans with signs in Japanese. Sadly, I won’t be able to see Sarah Nurse play when Toronto comes to town in March. Will there be crowds of young black girls cheering their role model on? I’m sure Nurse and Saroya Tinker, the league’s director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion hope so. You can read more about their work to get more black girls playing hockey here.

4) Women keeping the game running: three of the four referees were women, which made me smile about there being more than one path when you love a sport (I have been reading recently about Bouchra Karboubi, the Moroccan women who was denied the opportunity to play soccer as a girls but refereed at the Africa Cup of Nations that just ended. She is also the first Arab woman to referee a senior men’s match).

4.1) And don’t forget the coaching staff. Every official behind the Ottawa bench was a woman.

5) The hockey is really good and the model looks like it will be sustainable: PWHL games are broadcast of several TV channels and YouTube, and the league has attracted some solid sponsorships. The players all earn a living wage (a far cry from what the men earn, but it’s a start).

6) Sadly, the game ended in an overtime loss but that was almost incidental. I was this close to my own personal legend: three time Olympian and world champion and captain of the Ottawa team Brianne Jenner, the gay married mom of three. People with kids also need to see that there is a place for them as athletes.

This post seems appropriate for Valentine’s Day because I just love this league and these women. I can’t wait to go again on Saturday.