Nine-year-old Quinten Vangeloven couldn't wait to step onto the Kin Centre ice Sunday afternoon to play the first-ever boys-only ringette game.
He likes the idea of playing his favourite sport just with the boys and predicted it would lead to more peace and harmony, and even a few more laughs, when they finally got down to playing the game.
"It's just going to be guys on the ice, not any girls, so there won't be that many arguments," he said. "We just disagree on stuff.
"The guys make funnier jokes on the bench and the reffing might be a little bit better. The guys are pretty fun to play with. I think boys can teach girls how to show a bit more rough play in the sport. I don't do that much rough stuff but I get away sometimes with bodychecks."
The Prince George Ringette Association (PGRA) is spearheading the experiment to try to get more boys involved and organized the game for a group of 20 boys under the age of 10 as part of the Joy Hoffman Memorial tournament. For the exhibition game Quinten was among 20 boys (15 from Prince George, five from Terrace, Houston of Quesnel) making a bit of history playing what is predominantly a female-dominated sport.
The idea is to attract enough boys to build a competitive division province-wide which would compete apart from a competitive girls-only division. By separating boys from girls at the highest levels that takes into account the physical size difference as boys mature into teens. In the house leagues, boys and girls would continue to play together, as they do now.
"Because there are so many more coming into ringette we'd like to eventually have three types of ringette - all-boys, all-girls and co-ed, very much like hockey," said PGRA president Hugo McLeod. "We've never had the numbers, up until now."
McLeod says most of the ice times for practices are during weekday evenings, not early in the morning or on weekends, and that's helped attract more boys.
Registration in the PGRA has steadily grown the past few years. Of the nearly 200 players now playing ringette in the city, about 30 are boys. Sunday's boys-only game went over well and McLeod said he's looking forward to more games being scheduled for boys at other tournaments this season to keep the momentum going.
"In Richmond, the Lower Mainland ringette league has had quite an influx of boys as well so we're going to try to bring these boys teams down to have some exhibition games with them as well," said McLeod. "This is just to get the numbers up, we don't want just boys and just girls. We want to have the co-ed house league just for fun. But when you get into the competitive streams, the physical characteristics of the boys are quite different.
"Right now in double-A (the highest level played by Prince George-based teams) you can only have girls. The only way boys can play at an elite level is in the house leagues. So if we promote more boys coming in at the bottom levels when the skill levels are very equal. Then, hopefully, we'll have that base if they want to go to the competitive stream to make a team from all the associations."
Now in his fifth season, Quinten plays as a forward with the Prince George Red mixed gender under-10 team. He saw his older sister Cadance playing and decided when he was five he'd give it a try.
"My dad asked me if I wanted to try ringette and I really liked it," Quinten said. "I like that you cooperate (with teammates) and it's faster than hockey."
Ringette players are not allowed to carry the ring across the bluelines. It has to be passed to a teammate. The player receiving the pass can cross the blueline before the ring and that leads to quick transitions and more breakaways, fueling the argument that ringette is a faster game than hockey.
Cadance, 13, plays for the Northern Lights U-14 double-A team and she likes the concept of a boys-only ringette division.
"I think it might inspire the boys to come up and play ringette more because it's kind of known as a girls' game but it is a boy and girl game," said Cadance. "Boys are quite a bit rougher. Sometimes they're aggressive, it depends on what their coaches say to them about how to play."
Cadance would like to see her brother continue playing ringette into his teens and supports the idea of a competitive league for boys. She says he has all the right attributes.
"He's a pretty good player, he's got a nice shot and he skates hard and he puts his all into it," she said.
Quinten has watched enough of Cadance's games to know he can learn a thing or two from her.
"She's a strong defenceman, she doesn't stand around like a pylon in front of the net and she's really strong," he said.
Prince George has been selected to host the provincial A and B championships, March 8-10. The three-day tournament will bring together the four regional champions (Vancouver Island, Lower Mainland, Thompson-Okanagan, Northern) in each division. The event will determine the B.C. champions in four age groups (under-14, under-16, under-19 and 18 and older) in A and B divisions. It will be the first time Prince George has hosted A-B provincials for all age groups.
As many as 80 teams could be coming for the event.
The winners advance to the Western Canadian championships in St. Albert, Alta., March 28-31.
