University club team part of a growing sport and community
The ringette team is currently an all-women’s sports club at the University of Guelph and, although they are eyeing varsity status in the future, right now it’s about being the best team that they can be and continuing to grow as a club.
If you haven’t heard of the ringette team, you aren’t alone. A question that these women often get asked is: “What is ringette?”
This can become a frustrating question when you have heard it every year for the 17 years that you have played the sport.
For defender Gillian Montoya, that has been her experience with the sport over the years.
“I think it’s a really underrated sport, which can be very frustrating at times,” she said in an interview with The Ontarion. “Not a lot of people know about it and I feel like that’s a big reason why we don’t have the varsity status.”
Ringette is played a lot like hockey, with some additional rules which make passing a key component of the game. The sport focuses on fast transitions; there are no offsides, which means that the ring can be moved down the ice much faster. Ringette is a fast-paced and exciting game that requires athleticism and teamwork.
The ringette team meets three times a week for training and competes at up to six tournaments a year. Their season runs from September to March, which is longer than most varsity teams’ seasons.
The team does dryland training once a week on Mondays, as well as a team-only practice on Tuesdays and a club practice that is open to anyone who would like to play ringette on Thursdays.
According to one of the team’s captains, Jessica Johnston, the club practices are a good way to “reach out to the community to pull more people into ringette.”
The team also competes in the University Challenge Cup (UCC), which was hosted in Guelph this year. The UCC is the equivalent of university nationals, as teams from all over the country attend the challenge. Fourteen universities attended this year, with schools coming all the way from Alberta and Nova Scotia.
With the sport continuing to grow, varsity status is definitely something that the team has set their sights on for the future.
“It’s growing out west—it’s all varsity status there,” said Johnston. “Western [University] has varsity status, so I think it’s going to work its way over.”
“I feel like as we’re growing […] and working towards our varsity status, we have definitely upped just how much we compete and train with off-ice training, extra practice time, and we’re taking it more seriously. I think eventually it’s going to get there no problem,” Johnston added.
Club president and team captain Sarah Palmeter agreed that ringette has a future as a varsity team.
“There was a time when we couldn’t get any money from the school and put the real Gryphon logo on our jerseys, but things have changed,” she said. “We can get all the same clothes as varsity teams now, it’s growing for sure.”
The ringette team at Guelph is part of a growing sport and a growing community. Next year, they will be hosting the UCC again with the hopes of having 16 teams come out to the event. In addition, as more universities move ringette towards varsity status, the Gryphon ringette team certainly sees their team heading that direction in the future.
Photo courtesy of the Ringette Club.