Olds College Broncos female forward hockey player Abby Webster is surprised that the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL) will cease all operations come May 1, after 12 years of existence.
CWHL officials made that announcement about 10 days ago, saying the business model is "economically unsustainable."
“I was really surprised, I mean being a college athlete, we look up to a lot of those players,” said Webster.
Webster said it’s going to be tough not seeing strong female hockey players like Brianne Jenner having a platform to play on.
“She was our mentor this year, so we liked having her around and it’s sad that she doesn’t have a team to play on right now.”
Not having a place for these women to play hockey is something that Webster finds particularly frustrating.
“It’s hard to think that they have no place to play right now especially before their world championships,” said Webster.
Now with the CWHL soon to be gone, young fans looking for role models may turn to college hockey.
Webster agreed with that idea.
“Yeah, there’s definitely going to be younger kids looking for different role models to be able to see those big high performance players elsewhere from the CWHL, so they’re definitely going to be looking for other people to look up to,” said Webster.
Also shocked by the decision to fold the women’s hockey league was Olds Minor Hockey president Jeff Latimer.
“The female program is growing huge in Canada and to have something like that fold when it’s growing, it's going to be tough to encourage people to keep playing,” Latimer said.
However, Latimer doesn’t anticipate that this will impact the numbers of sign-ups for the 2019-20 season.
