Girls’ peewee teams signal growth
QUEBEC CITY — The autograph session over and her Olympic medal safely packed away, Charline Labonte acknowledged feeling a pang of jealousy during her latest visit to the International Peewee Hockey Tournament, where she played in net on a boys’ team in the early 1990s.
The three-time Canadian gold medalist, who also appeared in 28 games for Quebec Major Junior Hockey League’s Acadie-bathurst, wouldn’t change a thing about her past nor the challenges she and her trailblazing female contemporaries overcame in pursuing their dreams to play hockey.
And yet, the 40-year-old experienced a sense of wonder in looking around Quebec City’s Videotron Centre, seeing collections of girls wearing their team uniforms in the hallways, stands and, most importantly, on the ice.
“I wish I would have had those opportunities when I was younger,” Labonte said over the weekend. “To have the opportunity for young girls to compete against other girls, it shows that women’s hockey has grown so much over years ago. I think this is very exciting for them.”
Though the 63-year-old tournament has been open to girls competing on boys’ teams or as all-girl teams in boys’ divisions, this year’s 11-day event was distinctly different: It launched its first girls’ peewee division, made up of 12 teams representing Canada, the United States, Switzerland, England and France. The three U.s.based teams are from Connecticut, North Carolina and Florida.
“The demand was there. So we said, ‘Now it’s time to stop celebrating the girls’/women’s hockey once every four years. Now it’s time to celebrate every year,’ ” tournament general manager Patrick Dom said, referring to the four-year Olympic cycle. “It was time.”
Because the tournament places an emphasis on international competition, the continued growth of girls’ hockey outside of North America was the tipping point. The 2022 Beijing Winter Games featured 10 nations, up from eight in 2018 and six when the sport was first introduced in 1998. There’s also been a steady rise in the number of women’s pro leagues on both sides of the Atlantic.
Twelve teams competed in Quebec City this year, and about 28 more were turned down, opening the possibility of the girls’ division expanding by four next year — even at the expense of reducing the number of boys’ teams.
“If you take four more girls’ teams, you’re going to get four more calls from the boys’ teams saying, ‘Hey, the girls are taking our place.’ Well, you know what? This is what it is,” Dom said. “Women’s hockey needs to play, and it needs to be in the tournament.”