For Jennifer Soulliere and other girls who wanted to play hockey in the ’90s, it often meant joining the boys — and getting dressed alone, isolated from the rest of the team.
“There would be maybe four or five girls in Essex County playing in boys hockey,” Soulliere says. “Of course we all knew each other, and then ended up playing together and moving forward with our hockey careers.”
Soulliere, a LaSalle, Ont., native whose last name was Hitchcock during her hockey career, went on to make her mark as a skilled goal-scorer in the NCAA and then in a European professional league.
As players like Soulliere and Meghan Agosta paved the way for local girls wanting to try the male-dominated game, the sport exploded in Windsor-Essex and beyond.
Thirty years ago, the total number of players registered with the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association (OWHA), which includes girls and young women, was 9,626 — a record at the time.
Since then, registrations have hit a new all-time high: 41,019 players in the 2024-2025 season, according to fresh data from the OWHA. In Windsor and Essex County, registration hit 2,245 last season — the highest it’s been in at least 12 years, and very likely ever (OWHA did not have local data available for seasons prior to 2012).
The sport’s surging popularity among girls comes as the Professional Women’s Hockey League takes off in cities across the continent, giving the women’s game unprecedented visibility.
“There’s no more exciting time than now for girls hockey,” says Candice Chevalier, the head coach of the under-15 AA Windsor Wildcats. “It’s absolutely exploding, especially with the PWHL coming up.”
For Chevalier and other girls who started playing in the early 2000s, watching elite women’s hockey meant waiting every four years for the Olympics.
“So to see it through these girls’ lens is just incredible, where it’s just part of their everyday life, where they can throw on the TV and see professional women at a high level playing,” she said.
The surge is also happening within a broader boom in women’s professional sports driven in part by greater acceptance and respect for the athletes.
“It’s OK for girls to play hockey. It’s OK for girls to wrestle or play more physical sports, where it just wasn’t the norm before,” says Bill Atkinson, Soulliere’s former coach and now president of the South County Predators Girls Hockey Association.
“Everybody’s considered equal, so you get equal opportunity,” he said. “And I just think it’s the people 30 years ago, 40 years ago, really pushing for equality. It’s finally happened. It’s taken this long, but it’s finally happened.”
For Soulliere’s four-year-old daughter, that means having a host of girls programs and teams to choose from now that she wants to play.
But the expansion of girls hockey hasn’t been without challenges.
Ridicule and skepticism
“For over 100 years, women have played hockey in Ontario — a surprising revelation to many,” reads the OWHA’s annual report for the 1997-1998 season. “For close to 100 years, many skeptics have questioned and even ridiculed girls and women who enjoy playing hockey.”
That year, the organization celebrated more than 16,000 player registrations, and the recognition women hockey players were getting for their skill and passion as a result of their Olympic debut in Nagano.
Negative attitudes toward female hockey didn’t evaporate with the turn of the century, though.
Jason Trealout, now a Wildcats coach, still remembers the reaction he got when he started coaching girls hockey.
“When I left Windsor AAA [boys] to come coach with the Wildcats, I had a gentleman tell me, he goes, ‘Oh, so you’re moving down to girls hockey’,” Trealout says. “It hit me the wrong way. It hurt. I said, ‘No, no, I’m moving over to girls hockey’.”
At the time, he was coaching an under-15 Wildcats team. “Those girls competed just as hard as the boys,” he says.
Now he coaches the U-18 Wildcats BB team. “The sport has grown so much that it’s hard to deny,” he says. “And the talent has come up so much. It’s exciting, it’s fun hockey, it’s physical.”
His players say it’s largely considered normal for them to play now. “I’m in school and the hockey boys are great, we’re always talking about hockey, we’re talking about the World Juniors, we’re talking about the Olympics coming up,” says Reese Losier, who started playing when she was three. “It’s common for us, it’s just chill.”
Local associations see consistent growth
The Sun Parlour Female Hockey Association — home of the Wildcats — has grown to more than 425 players since its founding in 1993.
“It’s absolutely amazing, actually,” says Kristin Barone, the association’s secretary and one of its first players. “When I started, there was just a handful of girls. […] There was no age or division or anything like that. So it was — I was playing with 19-year-olds.”
In neighbouring Lakeshore, the Lightning girls hockey program has gone from around two dozen players at its founding in 1998 to nearly 500 this season.
Atkinson says the South County Predators organization, which includes Amherstburg, Harrow, and Kingsville, has around 200 players now — and sees steady growth.
“This association in general, we gain 30 to 40 kids a year,” Atkinson said. “We unfortunately lose 25 to 30 to travel hockey or aging out, but each year our numbers still increase.”
The PWHL has helped attract even more players, who might not have seen a future in the sport before, those involved in the sport say.
“I think it’s affected it,” Atkinson says. “I think the growth in female hockey also pushes the PWHL, right? It’s a little bit of both.”
What it means to girls
Olivia Versnel, a goalie for the Predators’ U15 blue team, and Alyssa Middleton, who plays centre, say they’ve loved making new friends through hockey — and just how fun it is to play and learn new skills.
“It’s awesome that female hockey players and female sports are getting really popular, because then you get to see the PWHL and all that,” Versnel says. “And it’s really nice to know that it’s like accepting now for women to play hockey.”
Losier, the Wildcats player, says hockey has helped her develop leadership skills. “I am in a leadership class at school. It builds my confidence as a person. It’s just — it’s a part of me now. It’s who I am.”
Her teammate Abby MacLellan says the sport has helped shape her identity, too. “I think resilience is a big part of it, hockey is a tough sport, so it makes you strong,” she says.
For Soulliere, who mostly played with boys until her teenage years, the growth of the women’s game means her four-year-old daughter can play with girls from the start. She’s joined a development program for girls under seven that Atkinson’s association started offering a few years ago.
“It’s amazing that our daughters or our kids are now growing up with that being the norm,” Soulliere said. “They’re joining girls hockey teams from the beginning, they’re having this experience that we just saw out on the ice here, loving the game from the beginning and it’s just such a — I think inclusive and fun atmosphere for kids.”
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