Following a tough few years through the pandemic, the Orillia Girls Hockey Association has found itself losing players — sometimes having difficulty icing full teams to play.
Although the organization’s rep program has weathered the disruptions well by comparison, several divisions of its house league program have been running a threadbare operation over the past year, often needing to come up with creative solutions to ensure teams were stocked with enough players, officials say.
Brian Gogarty, the director of house league for the local association, said the U11 and U9 divisions had a particularly difficult year last winter.
“The U9 team, this year, they didn't even have a goalie at the beginning of the year, so they were rotating each week with a different person,” Gogarty said.
With a minimum of eight players required to play a game, Gogarty said both teams sometimes had concerns that – should a player fall ill, or be otherwise unable to attend a game – they wouldn’t have a team to put on the ice.
“When, sometimes, the team was low, we would have to (bring in) a player from a lower division, or from outside of the community,” he said. “There was one game there we had to call Huntsville, so they sent a couple of players down to cover for our numbers.”
Last fall, as well, Gogarty said he was unsure the organization would be able to put together a U15 team.
“We were actually thinking we were gonna have to move these U15 girls that were interested in playing hockey up to U18 because we had such low numbers,” Gogarty told OrilliaMatters. “All of a sudden, out of the woodwork came enough (players) that they could field a U15 team.”
In years past, Gogarty said most teams would usually have a “solid bench” of players.
Now, however, the uncertainty wrought by the pandemic and issues with the ice at Rotary Place last winter led to the recent frustrations for the girls and their parents, which has led to reduced numbers of players.
“I think the pandemic … scared a number of them away, like there just wasn't consistency for a couple of years there,” Gogarty said. “When you're dealing with girls that age, they want to have fun, right? They want to get out, skate, and have fun competition.”
Through the pandemic, Gogarty said the girls had to occasionally play two metres apart from one another, miss out on games, and – at one point – they had to gear up in their parents’ cars, as opposed to the dressing room.
“It was very frustrating for a lot of them, so they (didn’t) know that they wanted to come back … and that's where we just dropped off,” he said. “That lack of consistency affected us, as we saw this year.”
Moving forward, the Orillia Girls Hockey Association hopes to draw more girls back into playing hockey and having fun, Gogarty said, noting the numbers issue has been a big topic of discussion at “pretty much every executive meeting” in recent memory.
Before summer break, Gogarty said he was visiting schools to speak about girls hockey and to encourage girls to come out and play.
“We did some presentations, just to the girls in the school, and then we also went and dropped off flyers … just in the hope that we could muster up more numbers and more parents to keep the association going steady,” he said. “We're really striving to do that. We might have to do that in the fall, too.”
Last fall, the organization offered reduced fees for the U7 division, and Gogarty said a solid number of girls showed up to play.
“We decided to go with the lower price for U7 just to try to draw more in last year, because sometimes (the) issue is the cost, so we brought it down to $95,” he said. “We ended up getting about 30 young girls registered for U7.”
The U7 fees will be raised back to $195 this year, Gogarty said, saying the reduced fee was unsustainable long-term for the organization, but he mentioned it is willing to help in other ways reduce the financial burden of hockey.
“If we have families that are struggling for equipment … we can find that equipment for the players ... That's no issue," he said.
“It's well worth it for that child to get a social experience and also build on their physical skills, as well.”
Gogarty said house league hockey is open to girls of all ages, and he encourages anyone – even first-time players – to come out and have fun.
This past year, he said two girls around 17-18 years of age joined house league to play hockey for the first time in their lives.
“They had a friend who said they should come out and play, and they decided to to come out and play hockey,” he said. “That's what's great about the house league. It allows first-time and beginners to just come out and build on those skills, whatever age they are”
More may be read about the Orillia Girls Hockey Association, and how to sign up, on the organization’s website.
