Yellowknife hosts inaugural hockey celebration for women and girls

It's hockey weekend in Yellowknife.

Organizers of the inaugural event called "One for All" are expecting more than 300 women and girls from across the N.W.T. and Nunavut to participate.

The four day event kicked off on Thursday and will include goaltending clinics, a Professional Women's Hockey League watch party and on-ice scrimmages.

The event was launched in partnership with Hockey Canada and Hockey North with the goal of celebrating women and girls in the sport, while encouraging more to join.

Juliet Goodman, 12, said she is typically the only girl on her hockey team in Yellowknife.

"I think that this [event] is really good for female development and keeping girls in hockey and to keep going, so I think it's great," Goodman said.

She said she attended because of her love for hockey and would enjoy going to more events like this in the future.

There are also off-ice networking opportunities and clinics and presentations from hockey alumni including three time Olympic winner Cherie Piper. 

"Just seeing a lot of these kids getting their equipment today for the first time, you can feel the excitement, the nerves," Piper said.

"It brings me back to when I first started, I wanted to play hockey for a lot of years, and finally after bugging my parents for three years, they let me try it for the first time and I instantly fell in love with the game."

Local coaches said opportunities like this are not common for athletes in the North, so to have an event bringing together more than 250 female athletes is empowering.

"It's just promoting female empowerment and female sport and keeping girls in sport. And I think that's a really great initiative to have," Kaylee Grant, territorial coach with Hockey N.W.T.

Organizers with Hockey Canada said when they were talking with partners across the country, the feedback they heard was the girls and women in the territory were facing a number of challenges, between the COVID restrictions, two years of flooding and wildfire events. 

"It's really important that we come up and we let the girls know that we see them, we hear them and we want to provide them with a barrier free opportunity to re-engage with the sport of hockey," said Marin Hickox, vice president of women and girls hockey at Hockey Canada.