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 Girls Can Play
By Alanah Downie
Exclusive to Femmefan.com
April 2, 2004
For me, one of the fantasies of being a sports fan
is imagining that I could be out on the playing field.
It doesn’t matter that I have no talent, no skills,
no discernible level of fitness (really, it’s
frightening how unqualified I am); I just feel an empathy
with the athlete. When my favorite hockey team finishes
that impossible, beautiful play, I feel like I’m
right there on the ice. In short, I own every win and
loss like it’s my own.
Part of this passion for NHL hockey comes from the
rise of women who do actually play the sport in other
arenas. This past week, for instance, has been the
Women’s World Championships in ice hockey, here
in Canada. Aside from the United States and Canada,
the level of competition is often quite poor, but still,
the very existence of this event is like a miracle
to me.
Prior to the 1990s, the dominant opinion was that “women
don’t play hockey” – and largely,
they didn’t. Even here in Canada, a hockey-obsessed
nation if ever there was one, women simply didn’t
have much chance to play. Our role was to be the unofficial
cheerleaders in a sport that didn’t want to pay
for the genuine pom-pom types.
The cheerleading thing was fine, and still is. After
all, isn’t that what all fans are for
their teams? We yell and cheer for the players, root
for the home-crowd, pray for the big championship.
If we aren’t in the game, we’re
all cheerleaders. Our boyfriends and husbands are the
same; if they’re sitting next to us on the couch
and swilling a beer during the game, screaming their
approval once in a while, they’re cheerleaders,
baby. (Try telling them that though, and they get kind
of upset. Go figure.)
But when I was growing up, there was a significant
difference between the men and women ‘cheerleaders’ at
the hockey games we attended each weekend. That is,
as women, we never even had the chance to
play, whereas our male friends could at least have
gone to the try-outs if they really wanted.
That disparity allowed our fathers, brothers, boyfriends
and husbands to easily imagine themselves out there
on the ice. But for us girls, that dream was only fantasy,
not even a remote possibility. We still loved hockey,
but we resented being excluded by the sport.
For many
women, this exclusion was enough to instill an emotional
distance from team sports that lasted a lifetime.
 So my generation (I’m 34 years old) just missed
out on this new era where women athletes are now allowed
to imagine being “professionals” at their
game from a young age. But these younger women have
earned it – they demanded to be able play, whereas
my friends and I were willing to just watch, and then
go back to organizing the prom committee.
Because of this new era, I think all women sports
fans have joined the men at another plateau. Like them,
we can’t all rise to fame playing our favorite
game, but we can all have that same emotional
connection to a sport that welcomes us, at least a
little bit. Even arenas like the NHL, the NBA, the
NFL each now belongs to us as much as them. We, too,
can imagine “it could have been me” out
on the ice, the gridiron, the court. We can all dream
of scoring the big goal.
As I watch the Women’s World Championships ice
hockey tournament this week, I am reminded of my own
childhood days playing shinny and street hockey. My
brother and I would spend hours on our backyard rink – both
pretending to be Vancouver Canucks players – and
it was usually me setting him up for the game-winning
goals.
I had a lot of fun in those days, but have one regret:
I wish I’d known then that girls really can play.
And I should have shot the puck more.
Check out Alanaha’s passion at: http://www.vancouvercanucksoped.blogspot.com/
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