Pioneer: Women's hockey hero inspires a generation
by Deborah Nobes
for CBC Sports Online

Sami Jo Small casually reaches into her purse, yanks out a blue velvet bag and lets her Olympic gold medal fall with a thunk onto an autograph table set up in the lobby of the K.C. Irving arena in Bathurst.

Dozens of little girls and their moms let out a cheer as the two-time Olympic goalie pulls a Team Canada jersey over her ponytail and settles in with her teammate Kelly Bechard to sign autographs for more than 30 minutes.

Small is attending as a celebrity athlete, hired by TSN to provide colour commentary during the 2003 Canada Games women's hockey tournament.

Small's career began at the Canada Games in Prince Edward Island back in 1991 playing for Team Manitoba. A former track star, Small hadn't played hockey before, and says the coach began their first tryout teaching prospective players how to cut down their sticks.

"The level of play back then doesn't even compare with what we have now," she admits.

She's right. The women on the ice at the current Canada Games are elite athletes, veterans of co-ed triple-A leagues across the country and competitive high school teams. The number of women and girls hitting the ice has grown by 400 per cent since 1993, spiking 30 per cent every time the Canadian women step on an Olympic podium. Presently, 55,000 Canadian girls and women play some form of organized hockey.

Small and her teammates are modest about their influence, but it's no secret that their two Olympic medals -- a silver in Nagano in 1998, and their Salt Lake City gold in 2002 -- have something to do with that enormous growth.

"I think we're not necessarily inspiring them to play, but we're making it okay for them to want to play hockey, and be out on that ice. For them to say 'yeah, I'm a girl, and yeah, I can play hockey,'" she says.

They certainly can. At the tournament's opening game, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia women drew a crowd of nearly 3,000 yelling, cheering fans. Many were parents and relatives of the players on the ice, but lots of fans just came to watch an exciting game of hockey.

"It's a wonderful game to watch," says Julie Healy, director of female hockey programs with the Canadian Hockey Association. "I think it is the pure form of the game, the way it is meant to be played. It's really skill-based and it's very team-oriented. I hate to say it is a little slower than the guy's game, but it is slower, and that makes it easier to follow."

Women's hockey is a game of finesse. No body checking, just aggressive skating, passing and play making. Physical size and strength lend no advantage here, as most of the women on the ice average about 5'6 and weigh less than 140 lbs. The New Brunswick goalie, Amy Howard, heroically deflected 47 shots from her Nova Scotia opponents - she's barely five feet tall and weighs 100 lbs.

Marion MacMillan and her sister Jesslyn Keeling wave their Nova Scotia flag proudly, encouraging their niece, Meghan Gillis, a forward for Nova Scotia.

MacMillan agrees the sport has grown exponentially, but still considers her 17-year-old niece a pioneer and believes the sport has a long way to go to gain mainstream acceptance.

"Their skill isn't up to the boys because there just isn't the numbers of players out there, and of course if all the good players continue to leave the country, the game isn't going to progress to where it could be," she says.

MacMillan's niece now attends prep school in the United States and has been recruited on full scholarship to an American university, where she can play hockey competitively. It's a common notion that the most promising young female hockey players have to leave the country to improve their skills, something the Canadian Hockey Association is working to change.

"We have some work to do," admits Healy. "I'm not a big fan of telling kids they shouldn't go places but I would prefer that we create better options for them here so that the choice to stay here is a better option to develop and play the game."

That means a better hockey infrastructure for women and girls - more financial support, better coaches, more league play in more provinces and more support from varsity athletics programs. A professional league wouldn't hurt, either.

"For these kids, their biggest aspiration is making the national team. They know they can't earn a living from it down the road, so it's all about passion and the love of the game," says Healy.

While many athletes leave the country to train, the path now being paved by Sami Jo Small and her teammates may lure them back to play for Canada. With every Olympics, every multi-national sporting event that Canadian women triumph in, more doors open for more female athletes.

"The neatest thing for me is to see older gentlemen who told me when I was growing up that I shouldn't be playing hockey, and now they are so proud that we came home with the gold medal and to tell me that was such an awesome game to watch," says Small.

"That's pretty neat because you know you've made a difference in somebody's life. Maybe they said that one little thing to you in the past, and that game has changed their entire perspective, on how they treat women, about everything they think about hockey."