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Women's hockey? Big deal.

The second annual Athabasca College Hockey Challenge went smoothly last weekend. The education fair was flooded with high school students at times. Athabasca’s young hockey players posed with high-level athletes on the ice.

The second annual Athabasca College Hockey Challenge went smoothly last weekend. The education fair was flooded with high school students at times. Athabasca’s young hockey players posed with high-level athletes on the ice. Games were well attended – at least the evening ones.

For many who saw it, the Friday afternoon nail-biter between the University of Alberta Pandas and University of Saskatchewan Huskies, which went into double overtime and finished in a shootout, was the highlight of the weekend.

Unfortunately, like their second game, it was scheduled mid-day, and the crowd was noticeably smaller than it was at the men’s games.

Sexism manifests itself through the sports industry and is supported by TV programs that ignore women’s sports or schedules that place their games in awkward time slots.

It was alluded to in the joke sports journalist John Short made while interviewing four athletes on stage at the community dinner. “You’re more than the symbolic female,” he assured Huskies player Kaitlin Willoughby.

It was obvious in the conversation one Advocate reporter had where someone said a women’s volleyball team they once coached was worse than their men’s team because they were too emotional to focus on the sport.

It’s possible that was true, in that specific case. But it indicates a problem when such damaging stereotypes come up easily in casual sports conversation.

ACHC committee co-chair Jeff Johnson said women did not have any evening games because that’s just how the schedule worked out.

For an event that prides itself on educating young athletes, that was a huge missed opportunity.

The debate on exposure is common with women’s sports. The number of women playing sports has increased over the years. Women’s hockey got its big break in 1990 when the International Ice Hockey Federation held its first women’s tournament. However, media coverage of women’s events is notoriously low.

The young female hockey players had all sorts of great opportunities to mingle with the women, on the rink, in the stands and in their own homes.

It would be even more empowering if people outside of the hockey teams could more easily see their games.

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