Without funding or formal recognition, UVic’s debut ringette team brings home a University Challenge Cup silver medal
Photo courtesy of Sam Allison.
The sound of skate blades cutting into fresh ice echoes through the halls of the Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre. It overlays a mixture of other familiar sounds: players calling for a pass, the crash of bodies slamming against the boards, the shrill cry of a whistle. To most, those sounds bring to mind one thing — hockey.
But today, they’re the sounds of the Greater Victoria Ringette Association (GVRA) returning to practice, after the first-ever UVic Ringette team — composed of many GVRA players — made its inaugural appearance at the December 27-31 2024 University Challenge Cup (UCC).
Ringette was invented in Canada in 1963 as an alternative to ice hockey. It is played with a straight stick rather than a curved blade and a six-inch rubber ring instead of a puck. Since its creation, the sport has endured a slow but steady growth. Initially centred in Ontario and Quebec, ringette has gradually crawled out to Western Canada. On Vancouver Island, it’s just begun to stand on its own.
“The popularity is there, and it’s only just growing,” says Sam Allison, a player, coach, and organizer for the GVRA. Allison, a former University of Calgary Dinos club player, has been involved in the sport since she was ten years old. She’s one of a dedicated group of individuals — many of them university students — who are committed to strengthening the presence of ringette on the island.
This season, these ringette enjoyers looked to make their biggest stride yet, by sending a UVic Ringette team to the UCC.
The UCC has been Canadian University Ringette’s national championship tournament since 1999. There are more than two dozen universities in Canada that host a ringette team.
This year, eleven teams made the trek to Lethbridge to attend the tournament, traveling from as far east as Dalhousie University, to as far west as the University of Victoria.
It was Allison and fellow organizer Kira Hodge who initially came up with the idea to put a team together for the UCC — a first-time venture. Hodge, who has been involved in both UVic Ultimate Frisbee and the UVic Lacrosse club programs, was able to use her connections within the club sports division to broach the idea of a UVic-affiliated Ringette squad.
“It was always kind of an idea in the back of our mind[s],” says Hodge. “But I didn’t know if it was something that would happen before I graduated.”
But, with a handful of committed players and UVic helping to fill some of the administrative gaps, a team was born.
Since she isn’t a university student, Allison was unable to play in the tournament herself. Instead, much of the organization fell to her, including suggesting to the UCC committee where her team should place on the pre-tournament rankings — a task which she admits was originally outside of her scope of knowledge.
“I honestly had no idea,” she says. “It was … just a wild guess.”
When those rankings were finally released, the UCC had placed the UVic squad in tenth place, second from the bottom. This meant that it was even more surprising when, several weeks later, UVic Ringette found themselves staring down the barrel of the tier two gold medal game.
“It was just such a palpable joy out of everyone,” says Allison. “We had no idea it was possible.”
Though they would eventually lose that game, it felt like a victory nonetheless, as many of the team members doubted they would ever be in contention for a silver medal, much less putting one around their necks.
“We went through the first round and we went 0-4,” recounts Allison. But, rather than let it weigh them down, the team let those losses fuel them.
“We kind of had the mindset of, like, our first four games are just to practice… our first game in Div. 2, we were like, okay, the tournament kind of starts now for us,” explains Hodge.
The key to that eventual silver medal, say Hodge and Allison, was letting go of expectations. For teams like the UofC Dinos, who have won over 40 per cent of the UCC tier one championships since the tournament’s inauguration, winning is paramount. Anything short of a gold medal means the entire season is labelled a flop. But for UVic, to even be included in the tournament meant the world.
“Seeing everyone really enjoy themselves and being able to bring that opportunity to the group was really rewarding,” says Hodge.
Looking to the future, Allison, Hodge, and others on the team hope to continue growing the game on the island, and to potentially continue sending teams to the UCC. Neither goal is without its challenges. The GVRA faces a constant battle to secure ice time, and without the lofty budgets of varsity sports programs, UVic Ringette will have to continue paying their own way to the UCC — a factor that may limit the team’s participation in next year’s tournament, which will be held in Ontario.
But for Allison, right now is about celebrating what made this team so great, and feeling proud that the event she helped put together meant so much to so many.
“Just having that joy of being [there],” she says. “You don’t have homework. All you have to do is go play a ringette game, come back to the hotel, eat food out of a crockpot, and then go play another ringette game.”
