Girls and Women of all ages play the game of Ice Hockey, participating in development leagues, the IHNSW Winter League, various in-house Summer Competitions organised by the rinks, through to playing in the NSW State and Australian National Womens Teams.
Joining the Ice Hockey Community
The best way to start an ice hockey “career” (addiction more like it), is to contact your nearest ice rink, and enquire about participating in their in-house ice hockey development sessions, usually held on a Saturday or Sunday morning. Some rinks will provide most of the kit, which are suitable for beginners. See below for session times that we know of.
Once you become more familiar with the techniques, you should consider purchasing properly-fitted ice hockey equipment. Be warned - this is an expensive sport once you really get into it and buy a full and proper kit. However, once your initial purchases are done, the equipment should last quite a few years.
To train and play Ice Hockey, you’ll need the following:
- An approved helmet with a full face cage/full visor.
- Neck Guard.
- Mouth Guard. Mandatory for all players born 1980 or later. Your best option is to go to your dentist and have a custom-formed mouth guard made. Mouth guards stop concussion and bitten tongues when you fall over (especially onto your back).
- Ice hockey skates. These can range in price from cheap to really expensive. You should get these properly fitted by an expert, as you’ll regret it later if you don’t. To play at any serious level, you need to be comfortable wearing them.
- Knee pads. These pads protect your knees down to the top of your skates.
- Ice Hockey pants. These pants are special pants that protect you from your rib-cage down to your knees.
- Shoulder pads. These pads protect your chest, shoulders, and back.
- Elbow pads. These protect your elbows and fore-arms.
- Gloves. These are thick, chunky, and protect your hands and wrists. Personal preference, but you need gloves that allow plenty of wrist movement, but do not slip off your hands.
- Jersey, socks, suspenders. For training, you can wear any jersey, so long as it’s loose-fitted. The socks go over your knee guards, and should go up to your thighs, where they’re fastened to the suspenders (underneath your ice hockey pants) to keep them up.
- Jillaroo strap (the girls equivalent of the jock strap); and
- an Ice Hockey Stick. If you are right-handed, you generally need a left-hand stick, as your dominant hand holds the top of the stick.
Please note that roller hockey equipment is similar to the above, but generally less protective. It’s tempting to buy roller hockey protective gear, but the requirements for ice hockey are different. IHNSW does not allow roller hockey equipment being worn during formal games.
The initial sessions will be quite daunting, as there’s lots to learn. Take your time, work on the skills, and build your confidence in the fine arts of balance, skating, stopping, turning, skating backwards, transitions, pivots, puck handling, deking, shooting, passing, flicking the black biscuit off the ice, slap shots, wrist shots, snap shots, trick moves, falling over and getting back up again…. the list goes on.
Scrimmages/Informal Games
Once you feel up to playing some games, there are in-house drop-in sessions at most rinks, usually held one evening during the week (or weekends). Some rinks have junior and senior drop-in sessions, sometimes geared more towards age, and sometimes graded by ability. These sessions are informal scrimmages, usually without any refs, follow the rules quite loosely, and are often enormous fun to participate in. Some nights, the AIHL players will turn up, and it’s then quite a challenge to deke/score/puck-handle/defend/pass with and against them. Use those sessions as learning experiences, and don’t be afraid to ask questions!
There are also several formal Summer Comps run by the various rinks, which pick up when the formal Winter League is finished. They’re geared more towards the more-experienced players wishing to play across Summer. Some rinks, however, do have informal summer comps running for the beginner to intermediate players.
The Winter League
Once you feel you’re ready to play some games for real, you’ll need to join up with IHNSW, generally through one of the registered clubs. Girls and Women can play in Atoms up to Midgets (Bantams and Midgets being dominated by the boys, and are full-contact divisions), Womens League, Senior C and Senior B. The Atoms, Peewee, Womens League, and the two Senior divisions, are non-contact leagues. However, the definition of “non-contact” is no deliberate body-checking. This means that we still clash bodies, pin each other to the boards, often to advantage, but we’re not allowed to “check” each other (like you see in the NHL games).
Continuing Development
If you’re interested in advancing your skills and knowledge of the game, there are several options:
- One-on-One private lessons. These are organised through the rinks, but are hard to find, and even harder to get a spot in. Once you start these lessons, don’t stop! They are the most effective way of advancing your skills quickly. Even a short 6 to 8 week series will see your skating and puck skills improve enormously.
- At-home practice. Use your garage walls to bounce pucks off, stick-handle pucks and balls in the driveway, the choices are endless. Don’t under-estimate the refinements you can achieve by practicing at home.
- Gym. Get fit, build muscles, build up aerobic/anaerobic fitness.
- Swim/Run/Cycle. Great for building aerobic/anaerobic cardiac fitness. Ice Hockey is an extremely fast sport - the quicker you can recover from a shift, the better you will become, and the more “in-the-game” you’ll be.
- General skating sessions. Believe it or not, general skating sessions are great for improving your skating abilities.
- Development League Training Sessions. These training sessions are held by the various rinks throughout the year on most weekends.
- Australian Womens Grassroots Development Training Camps. These weekend camps were inaugurated in Canberra and Newcastle in 2007, and consist of intensive on and off-ice training for girls and women aspiring to State and National Level.
Learning the Rules of the Game
One aspect I haven’t touched on is learning the rules of the game. You should read up on the rules of the game, especially the off-side and icing rules, as these tend to be the two biggest areas where players get pulled up. Ice Hockey doesn’t have a lot of rules, so they’re fairly easy to remember. The definitive source for the rules is the IIHF Rules Web Page. You should also read the IHNSW Handbook, which contains rules and amendments specific to the competitions held in NSW.
IHNSW have a couple of excellent guides on their website that you should read:
Development League Training Sessions
As alluded to above, there are several options open to improve your ice hockey skills. The various rinks usually run development league training sessions for beginners through to intermediates (not specifically for Women) on weekends. The sessions are run by qualified and experienced Ice Hockey coaches, who typically work on the basics of skating and puck handling. These sessions are very well attended, open to the general public (ie you don’t need to be an IHNSW registered member), and are enormous fun.
The training sessions that we know of are as follows:
- Canterbury Olympic Ice Rink (ph: (02) 9789 4044). COIR run a session between 12:45pm to 2:15pm on Saturdays. These sessions are graded into “Kids and Beginners”, and “all the rest”. Training gear is provided if you’re a beginner. There is also a session on Sunday mornings between 9:30am and 11:00am, geared more towards the intermediate/advanced players.
- Sydney Ice Arena (ph: (02) 9659 5557). SIA run a session between 8am and 10am on Sunday mornings. Some equipment is available for beginners. The sessions are also graded into “Kids and Beginners” and “all the rest”.
If you have any queries about these sessions, session times etc, please contact the rink concerned for more information.