The WIN Women’s Hockey team (Woodsworth-Innis-New),
despite being very talented, is having a very tough time clenching a
play-off position this season. I should probably clarify before I go
any further, that despite the name WIN, the team fails to have any
Innis or New College players, at least not any that have shown up to
any games. The team does, however, have several VIC, St. Mike’s
and OISE players. In the last season
the members of WIN were able to bring a very skilled and
well-disciplined level of hockey to each of their games, winning three
out of five of their regular season games, but then being eliminated in
the first round of play-offs due to a lack of numbers. This was the
first time in many years that the WIN Women’s Hockey team was
able to make the play-offs, and it’s disheartening when a team is
unable to obtain a division title because of a lack of participation,
and not a lack of skill.
This season the members of WIN are being
faced with a very familiar situation, possible elimination from the
play-offs. The team was able to scrape out their first win of the
second semester on March 5, but is still sitting at the bottom of the
division. This rank does not in the least reflect the team’s
skill level. Two out of four of the games played so far this season
were very close losses. In both games the WIN women dominated the rink,
outplaying the competition, but running out of steam fairly quickly
since there was only one substitute player on the bench. Another game
this season was a default since the team was seriously short of
players, with only three skaters and a goalie showing up. The minimum
number of players a team must have in order to be allowed to play is
six skaters and a goalie. With a roster of around fourteen players, it
makes one wonder why a team can’t even get the bare minimum out
to partake in a sport that is deemed “Canada’s national
pastime.”
The fourth game of the season was a win
against Medicine, which finished only moments before writing this
article. The game was another exhausting battle, but at least this time
the teams were even in number, carrying a mere two subs apiece. The
members of WIN were able to secure a two-goal lead halfway though the
first period, which they were able to carry throughout the game, ending
in a 5-3 victory over Medicine. For the first time this season it was
actually an evenly matched game, not only in the sense that both teams
had the same number of players, but also in the sense that neither team
had to play the referees.
Lately, after the merging of the two
women’s divisions it seems, it has been hard to get a good
refereeing duo. Most refs now seem to be from the women’s varsity
team and call the game according to how their boyfriends see it in the
stands, not how it is actually played on the ice. Not to mention a
large portion of them are incredibly lazy and feel as though they can
successfully call the game from the redline.
The combination of the two women’s
hockey divisions was due to, you guessed it, a lack of participation by
registered players on all of the teams. At the beginning of this
season, the four teams from division two collapsed into the two teams,
Medicine and SORR (Skule-OISE-Riff Raff). This merge of teams gave each
a roster of about twenty players. The division one teams were then
moved down into division two to create a six-team league; why they
didn’t move the division two teams up I don’t know. This
merge was necessary due to the lack of commitment to the teams. All of
the teams this season, not only WIN, seem to be suffering from little
to no turnout for the games despite the very large roster that each
team carries. Unfortunately, this lack of turnout for games seems to be
a common theme throughout all intramural leagues this year.
