YORKTON – Evan Johnson, Head Coach of the Yorkton Lions Club Terriers, is spearheading a new initiative to promote female hockey in Yorkton.
His daughter, who has been playing for several years now with the co-ed or boys teams in Yorkton, inspired him to take action.
“I wanted to expand on the female side of it and give them an opportunity to play a bit more competitive hockey with the female age group or category,” said Johnson in an interview with Yorkton This Week.
“A lot of the carded tournaments or more elite tournaments are primarily with boys so this gives all the girls in the area an opportunity to come together and play a few tournaments throughout the winter,” said Johnson.
He believes that this initiative is long overdue, as it’s been years — or maybe the first time ever — that a carded team has been based out of Yorkton.
“So that’s what I’m trying to do is make it — create it — so hopefully one day our Yorkton Lions Club Terriers are playing in a league based out of Yorkton that travels to Estevan, Weyburn, Regina and Saskatoon,” said Johnson.
Johnson describes a carded team as a travelling team.
“Through Sask Hockey they do what is called carded weekends. You have four designated weekends throughout the winter where you put teams together of higher calibre players and they go to tournaments throughout the province and play each other.”
For this year, the team will be considered a travelling team and possibly play into the spring season as well.
“We have a camp coming up but it was mainly an invite team for the first year with girls and families that I knew from the area,” said Johnson, adding, “everything is kind of set — jerseys are ordered and things like that."
“For next year I’ll be starting this a little bit earlier and trying to put more teams together,” said Johnson.
Johnson believes that this initiative is about more than just hockey.
“It’s more about getting them together, getting them out there, letting them these families and these girls know that there is an opportunity to play girls-only hockey,” said Johnson, adding, "once these girls get out there and start competing against other girls they're going to gain so much confidence and I think it will help them throughout the whole season with both teams."
“In September we had a female hockey weekend put on by Yorkton Minor Hockey that was open to all girls in the area,” said Johnson, “Yorkton Minor Hockey organized to have the University of Sask Huskies, University of Regina Cougars and the University of Manitoba Bisons come to Yorkton for the weekend and they played games and put on camps all weekend.”
“It was very well attended and inspiring for a lot of these girls to see what the next level of hockey can look like for them if they stick with it and work hard,” said Johnson, adding, “there’s a lot of opportunity that’s always been out there for the boys which is widely known — but for the girls — they too can go and get an education and play sports at the same time just as much.”
The Yorkton Lions Club has shown their support for this initiative by funding over $2000 for uniforms for the girls. “I put a call in and a letter in and our team with no name at that time presented to the Lions Club for funding of a new set of jerseys for us,” said Johnson of the sponsorship.
Johnson believes it’s important to start now and develop a program that helps these girls stay close to home.
“There isn’t a female program once they hit U13 — you see the numbers drop off even more and a lot of the girls are quitting just because it does get rough and tough as you get older," said Johnson.
“We draw from such a huge area in Yorkton … it’s disappointing that this doesn’t exist already,” said Johnson who later noted the team is made up of girls from Yorkton, Melville, Canora and Langenburg.
As for the future, Johnson said he hopes interest takes off and that the program expands.
“My hopes and dreams is to have teams U7, U9, U11 and U13 within the next three years.”
