Girls driving minor hockey numbers up despite population decline
20% of minor league players are female, says Hockey NL
Girls are helping Newfoundland and Labrador minor hockey buck demographic trends in the province.
While the number of minor hockey aged residents in this province has dropped over the years, the number of people signed up to play minor hockey has grown from 8,355 in 2008 to 10,664 in 2018.
Hockey players like Skye Evans, 10, are part of the reason why.
"I love hanging out with my friends and playing hockey with them," said Evans, who plays for the under-12 Northeast Eagles.
If we don't get more females in hockey, then we are not going to grow.- Jack Lee
"They have a team now of only girls now. It's really fun."
Hockey NL president Jack Lee says he's seen the number of female players in minor hockey mushroom in recent years.
"We have over 2,000 girls playing now. Five, six years ago we probably only had 1,000 girls and I would say next year in the 2018-2019 season we'll see another jump in female hockey," he said.
Not just St. John's area
The northeast Avalon Peninsula has watched minor hockey enrolment grow as more young families move in.
The Northeast Minor Hockey Association has seen registration almost double to 700 players over the last 10 years but smaller communities such as Bonavista, Clarenville, Deer Lake, Fogo Island and Marystown have also seen increases over that time.
In fact, Lee says, girls have probably saved some minor hockey associations in rural Newfoundland and Labrador.
"Without the females participating in the game, we probably wouldn't have grown as much as we did and we probably would have lost some minor hockey associations in some smaller parts of the province," he said.
Rejecting the naysayers
For her part, Skye Evans says she's not listening to critics who say hockey is only for boys.
"I don't believe them," she said.
She says she and her friends plan to keep playing hockey and may even let the boys join their games someday.