For the only girls team at Quebec City’s International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament, it’s about representation

Natalia Chenier generally looks like she’s dreaming, as she walks round on the Worldwide Pee-Wee Hockey Event in Quebec Metropolis.

“I’ve needed to do that for therefore lengthy. I nonetheless cannot imagine I am right here. It is wonderful!” she mentioned.

Chenier is a ahead with the Ladies PeeWee All-Stars, the one all-female staff enjoying within the 2022 version of the storied match, which brings collectively 130 groups from everywhere in the world.

She’s enthusiastic about taking to the massive ice on the Videotron Centre, after the match was cancelled final yr because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I truthfully really feel like I am actually fortunate to be right here as a result of not many women get to return to the Pee-Wees. I am actually fortunate to return right here and characterize them.”

Chenier is from Baie d’Urfé in Montreal. She performs with a boys triple-A staff. However she loves enjoying with the All-Stars and hopes sometime it will not be the one ladies staff in competitors.

“A division can be wonderful. It could be nice to see ladies enjoying the game and doing what they love,” she says.

A hockey hero on the helm

Coach Caroline Ouellette understands her gamers’ pleasure.

“It is all the time unbelievable for me to see how excited they’re, how they’re reaching a dream being right here. And I am having a good time.”

Ouellette is a pioneer in ladies’s hockey. As a member of the Canadian ladies’s staff, she is a four-time Olympic gold medallist and six-time world champion.

She says a match just like the Pee-Wees in Quebec Metropolis empowers the women to play with different ladies and be aggressive. Ouellette says different coaches and gamers inform her how shocked they’re at how effectively — and the way exhausting — the women play.

She says it is essential for the boys to see that.

“I believe that lesson they be taught at 11, 12, to respect ladies, to respect ladies in sport is big.”

Discovering methods to carry ladies to the game

In 2014, Ouellette noticed the variety of ladies enjoying hockey dwindling. So she began a non-profit group known as Ladies Hockey Celebration, in collaboration with Hockey Quebec. She needed to concentrate on younger gamers at an age the place statistics present that ladies begin quitting sports activities.

They maintain a yearly match and invite ladies to enroll, individually, or as groups, and no matter whether or not they often play with ladies or boys. On the finish, they maintain an All-Stars recreation and the 19 finest gamers are chosen for the All-Stars staff.

The PeeWee Ladies All-Stars have been coming to the match in Quebec Metropolis since 2016. In 2017, they made it to the ultimate of their division.

Ouellette says they are not a novelty anymore.

“Everybody is aware of we’re right here and everybody is aware of we will do effectively.”

Getting ladies began in hockey and giving them a future

Ouellette says ladies’ hockey provides a camaraderie many have not recognized enjoying on boys groups. She says ladies usually need to swimsuit up in one other locker room, then be part of their teammates. Some are bullied.

“After they come collectively right here, they see that it is enjoyable. They make mates for all times,” Ouellette mentioned.

The coach has seen gamers make the swap to women’ hockey within the U-15 class after enjoying for the All-Stars. And alumni have gone on to massive success.

“A few of our gamers from the primary version are enjoying school hockey in Canada and the U.S., they usually’re a number of the finest CEGEP gamers in Quebec,” Ouellette says.

Ladies’s hockey remains to be dealing with challenges at senior ranges.

This week, the CEGEP de Saint-Laurent confirmed it is suspending its ladies’s program briefly, citing issues recruiting gamers and coaches.

Ouellette performed for the Patriotes, thought of one in every of Quebec’s strongest CEGEP packages. However she by no means had the chance to be paid as knowledgeable hockey participant. To this point, the highway to knowledgeable league has been rocky.

After a rebrand, the Premier Hockey Federation has its monetary home so as. And the Skilled Ladies’s Hockey Gamers’ Affiliation League is predicted to launch throughout the yr.

Ouellette believes the ladies’s time has come.

“It is a totally different sort of hockey,” she mentioned. ” I believe similar to individuals respect that tennis is totally different for women and men and the fan base has grown simply as a lot. I believe we will go there with ladies’s hockey.”

Step one in a profession

Elizabeth Papineau began skating at two on a rink her father made for her within the yard of their residence in Gatineau. She began enjoying hockey at 4. She performed different sports activities, however hockey was her favorite.

Papineau looks like she’s making an enormous leap by enjoying on the Pee-Wee match in Quebec Metropolis.

“It is like step one of your massive profession in hockey. It is actually massive and it is enjoyable to play within the Videotron Centre.”

A profession in hockey is strictly what Papineau has her sights educated on.

“Making the Olympics for certain, being on Crew Canada, being on the TV. I actually hope that little ladies are going to look at me in the future.”

Caroline Ouellette remembers the time earlier than the Vancouver Olympics, the place she competed as a member of the Canadian ladies’s staff in 2010. Boys would snigger when the ladies would stroll into the rink.

After Vancouver, and the success of the staff and the Canadian athletes normally, the boys on the rink knew who the feminine gamers had been and needed autographs.

“I am going to always remember that shift.”