Para hockey hopes collaboration with PWHL gives boost to women participants
Inaugural women's world championship to be held in August
Émilie Robitaille has seen many of the ups and downs of women's Para hockey in Canada, first as an athlete and now as president of Women's Para Hockey of Canada.
She's watched as the Professional Women's Hockey League has exploded in popularity, catapulting the sport to new heights and bringing with it a slew of new fans. That's part of why she's excited about a set of ongoing collaborations between the two organizations.
"The dream of female hockey athletes and their allies was to get the recognition they deserve with the creation of a professional league," Robitallie said via email to CBC Sports. "We recognize ourselves a lot in them since our dream is similar, that is to say to offer the opportunity to women practising Para hockey to compete at the 2030 Paralympics.
"Men in Para hockey have been competing at the Paralympics since 1994. It is time for women in Para hockey to get the same recognition."
The sport received a boost this week with the announcement of the first women's world championship, to be held Aug. 26-31 in Slovakia. Fundraising is underway to be able to host a team training camp, with estimated costs being around $10,000 per athlete.
When asked what an ideal future for the Canadian women's teams looked like, Robitaille said she feels collaboration and promotion are at the core.
"If I have a crystal ball, I would like for the athletes to be released of all the financial charge[s] that come with the training and all the traveling that they need to do to train," she said. "I would like to have more opportunity for the women on the national team to meet together."
Collaborations with the PWHL are ongoing, with a portion of the proceeds from the sale of a shirt for women's empowerment going to both the Canadian and American women's Para hockey teams, a series of showcase events in the coming weeks, and commitment from both sides to grow the game of hockey together.
While Para hockey is a mixed gender sport at the Paralympic level, only three female athletes have ever competed at the Games.
Unlike their mixed team counterparts, the women's team is neither funded by Hockey Canada nor recognized as a national sport organization.
Saroya Tinker, the PWHL's manager of diversity, equity, inclusion, and community investment, said that it's the PWHL's hope that they can do their part to see the women's team competing in France five years from now.
"If we want to continue to grow and build the sport, little girls have to be able to see themselves in every area, not just as an able-bodied athlete," Tinker said. "There are plenty of disabled young women out there who would love to hop on the ice and play hockey, and we want to make sure that they can see that at the PWHL."
She added that the PWHL's athletes are game to learn more about all forms of hockey, on sledges or otherwise.
"They want to make sure that they know every aspect of hockey. And at this point, knowing every aspect of hockey is knowing the accessibility features within hockey and how we can provide it for everyone [it] is a huge thing," Tinker said.
The collaboration with the Canadian women's Para hockey team isn't the only foray the PWHL has made into Para sport. Last year the Toronto Sceptres supported a blind hockey tournament and the Minnesota Frost recently had a blind hockey player introduce their lineups.
This commitment to supporting Para sport is evidence of a growing trend within hockey. Chanel Keenan became the first intersectional consultant in the NHL when she worked with the Seattle Kraken.
Keenan, who has done independent research in the past looking at the disabled fans' experience at NHL games, said that its most common for a professional sports team to become interested in a specific disability community if someone high up in the leadership structure has a relationship to a particular disability, such as is the case with the Philadelphia Eagles' Autism Foundation and their owner, Jeffrey Lurie, whose brother has autism.
While Keenan no longer works with the Kraken, she said that the inclusion of Para sport, and disabled people more broadly, within any professional league has to lead to sustained momentum — and opportunities in spaces across the board, from employment to fan-focused initiatives — if it is going to succeed in the long-term.
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"In a lot of ways, the relationship between professional sports and disability is heavily based around charitable opportunities and collaborations, and hospital visits, and programs that match athletes with disabled people, but that relationship is strictly professional," Keenan said. "I would hope that through exposure and building relationships and having employment opportunities and having just an openness to it, that there would be a stronger connection in it, that would be more sustainable."
But how does the PWHL make collaborations happen? Tinker said that two of the advantages that the PWHL has is that it's a nimble start-up oepration and it has a single ownership model. L.A. billionaire Mark Walter owns all six teams.
"No matter what city you're in, they're going to activate in different ways, but the messaging, and the education. and the desire to include and create everything to be equitable and diverse is there consistent for all six," she said.
That single ownership model allows the PWHL to move quickly and to share experiences and learnings on a weekly basis between the six clubs. Tinker said that their set up means they can react to the needs of the moment and focus in on how they want the sporting world to look.
"I think a lot of traditions, they're old, they're outdated, they're not accessible, they're not inclusive," she said. "And when we get to build those traditions, right from the start, we are ensuring that our fan base is always going to be included, no matter where we are in the social, political sphere that we we live in"
The PWHL is highlighting Canadian women's Para hockey athletes at a series of games, one of which was on March 4 in Montreal. Raphaëlle Tousignant, a longtime member of the team and the only Canadian to be named to the mixed gender team, said that the opportunity to showcase the sport is not one she takes for granted.
"Support that is that size from a league, I think I've never seen that before, so it's very exciting," Tousignant said. "And we have the same goal, basically, we fight for gender equity. So it's very cool to to have a partnership with them."
She said that this collaboration is an opportunity to create more opportunities for athletes on the women's team. She sees the lack of funding that the PWHL is trying to help address as both a source of significant frustration and motivation.
"I don't want to take anything for granted, and I think having to work to get the money together and to have the opportunity to represent my country is kind of an extra motivation. But it sucks," she said.
A collaboration between an able-bodied sport and a Para sport can take many forms, often resulting in a demonstration or a one-off event as part of a half-time show. Board member Shayla Kelly-Taekema said that the team has been very selective over the years when it comes to what they want to sign onto over the years.
"We want [the athletes] to be recognized for the high-calibre athletes that they are and what the sport takes, and that can't be shown in five minutes in-between the Zamboni," Kelly-Taekema said.
She believes that both organizations have a lot to share with each other, not least of all because their origin stories share so much.
"I think we're seeing a lot of similarities in journey, and then a lot of empathy in knowing how hard it is to break through," she said.
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