A female Calgary hockey player — who asked for anonymity — has warned how her rec league’s new transgender policy discourages girls from the sport just as the PWHA (Professional Women's Hockey League) “made a name for women’s hockey.”Female players in North America finally got a professional league in the 2023/24 season after the collapse of the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL) in 2019. The PWHA became the first financially-stable, unified women’s league on the continent, elevating women’s hockey and offering the opportunity for female athletes to make a career of the sport. The 34-year-old female who has played on a Calgary-based CARHA (Canadian Adult Recreational Hockey Association) team since 2019 alerted the Western Standard of an addition to the league’s policies allowing people of “all genders” to play on women’s teams. The Canada-wide hockey league, with headquarters in Ontario, updated its website with a new “transgender policy” on September 30, 2023, and emailed players a memo alerting them of the update February 27, 2024. However, rather than specifying there are new rules allowing biological men to play on women’s teams, the update was available only through a link to a general page on the CARHA website with several other topics listed. “It didn't come as just a transgender policy. It came as a bulk email and then I looked down (on the page) and I just saw it randomly. And I was like, interesting,” said the player, who will be referred to as Rachel for the purpose of this article to protect her standing in the league. “Because we were told to look over the whole thing, but it didn't say anything about new policies. And that is definitely a new policy.”“We’re also in playoffs right now, too,” added Rachel, whose team is made up of women in their 30s to 70s. “So I just wanted to make sure that everything was lined up.” .“My first response to it was, I personally chose to be in a women's league, and I don't love changing and undressing in front of people, but I'm okay with just other women,” Rachel told the Western Standard. “I’m just trying to picture what it would be like (with men in the changerooms). And just the way it’s worded, you don’t really get to question it," she explained. "I signed up for this woman's league, but now all of a sudden someone identifying as a woman can just come in there, but I can't do or say anything about it. I just have to accept it. And that just kind of threw me off.”However, the problem isn’t limited to the issue of having biological men present while women undress — the biggest concern Rachel has with the issue is that women’s hockey has had a rocky time making a name for itself and there are limited options for females to make a career out of the sport — that is until the PWHA was established this season. “It's hard to make a name for women in the sport,” said Rachel. “Then all of a sudden now, well it's not really a women’s league at this point.”.Rachel illustrated her point by mentioning a male player on her husband’s hockey team who has recently started identifying as a female. He started taking hormones at the beginning of this season, and teammates have had to “watch what they say.” “When I read that (CARHA) email I was thinking, at any point, now that it's becoming accepted into women's hockey, I can't imagine them coming over into female hockey,” said Rachel. “He will just come in and dominate. That can happen now, at any point.”“After reading that policy, I know nobody would even have a say. The policy says that you have to be accepting and they're able to go in there,” Rachel continued. “If they identify as a woman, they’re a woman. They get to be called a woman. Do everything a woman would do.”“It’s hard to talk about it,” she explained. “And I feel like I'm not the only one that would be thinking like this. It's such, at the moment, a sensitive topic that you’re basically beating around the bush to talk about it.“The more and more I thought about it, no, something needs to be said,” Rachel explained. “It's not even comparable, it's like a slap in the face because they work so hard. They're doing everything they can to get to their maximum ability. And then you have somebody that's at their maximum on a different, harder level, but no, they can come. It's gonna get taken away.” .Rachel, who was previously a women’s hockey coach as well as lifelong player, said from personal experience she knows it’s hard for women to “maintain an active role” in the sport. “And now they've got the PWHL for women, which is so cool, and that's doing really great,” she said. “But the NHL has men, we have like our women's league, okay, but now what? And now we can have a male identifying as a woman coming into the PWHL after we just finally made a name for women's hockey.”.Roles for women in hockey are limited past high school if not picked for a college team — many females go into announcing or coaching, but prior to the PWHL women had no options to play professionally. “It's discouraging,” said Rachel. “If you don't get picked up by a hockey school, if you don't get on a college team, really, you can only do pick-up hockey.”“But now you can actually see a bigger picture and this amazing new league that sells out stadiums and then all of a sudden — nope, just kidding. It's not just women anymore. Anybody can just come in.”“When you get people advocating for a women’s sport like that, something that you love very much and you've been through it all — it's hard to think of that getting taken away,” said Rachel, who works with young children . “I see that there's this one young girl who is just obsessed with hockey,'' Rachel explained. She’s exactly like me when I was little. And I just think, who knows where it's going to be when you're old enough.”“If nobody's gonna talk, and like, the next generation, like, who's gonna help them?”
