Breaking the Ice
Mixed-gender teams aren’t as inclusive as they seem, especially at the Paralympic level. Alyssa White dreams of playing para hockey in the Paralympics for an official Canadian women’s team, but right now that team doesn’t exist.
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Sharp blades — anchored to sledges the players are strapped to — cut through the ice. The puck moves underneath sledges, between blades, and around hockey sticks, almost too fast to follow.
This is a mixed-gender para ice hockey game, commonly known as sledge hockey, and it’s one of the main attractions on this night at the Hockey For All Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Players dig the butt-end of their hockey sticks into the ice to make turns so tight they almost tip over. The air in the arena is crisp, but slightly warmer than Winnipeg’s extreme cold waiting outside.
Para hockey is an ice sport that follows the same rules as “stand-up” ice hockey (as para hockey players call it) but is designed for people with physical disabilities. The sport uses a sledge with two blades attached to the bottom of the seat. The players use two short hockey sticks in each hand to maneuver the sledge and shoot the puck simultaneously. If you grew up as a rink rat, the sticks might remind you of makeshift dressing room keys attached to the blade of a hockey stick. The players push themselves forward with the butt-ends of the sticks and flip the sticks over to play the puck.
Each team playing today has six men and one woman.
Alyssa White — one of two women on the ice — is a ball of energy. During the first-period intermission, she sits in a semicircle with her teammates laughing. During the game, even when she’s fully locked in, she has a grin plastered across her face.
For White, para hockey is more than just a sport. The now 19-year-old made the Women’s Para Hockey of Canada team at just 14 years old. She was the youngest on the team at the time.
“It’s my whole life,” says White. “It’s my passion. It’s what I love to do. It’s what I wake up every day and think about.”
White was born with spina bifida, a neurological condition that develops when the spine and spinal cord don’t form properly. In White’s case, a cyst is attached to her spinal cord, so she’s missing part of her vertebrae. As a child she was able to walk until the disability developed further.
Before starting para hockey, White was a swimmer. While taking swimming lessons through the City of Winnipeg’s recreation program, a coach from the Para Storm Swim Club asked her to try para swimming, and she swam for the next five years. The para sports community then introduced her to para hockey at 11 years old, where she quickly grew into a talented player. Just three years after she started playing, she made the women’s national team, a quick transition from beginner to elite athlete.
White says some of her proudest hockey moments are competing on the international stage and scoring her first goal on the women’s national team — and unless something changes, that’s the farthest she’ll go. White’s next step and ultimate dream is to play in the Paralympics, but the competition doesn’t — and never has — included women’s para hockey.
The Paralympics is the pinnacle of international sporting competitions for people with disabilities, where they compete against the world’s top athletes. But for now, White’s pinnacle will be the Women’s World Challenge.
The inaugural Women’s World Challenge, an international para hockey tournament hosted by World Para Ice Hockey, took place in 2022 in Green Bay, Wisconsin and raises funds and awareness for the sport. This tournament is a step on the way to introducing a world championship and eventually a Paralympic team for women.
“I was so incredibly proud to have been able to compete at the first Women’s World Challenge and make history on the women’s side of the game,” said White. “[It] is the only time I’ve gotten to play solely against women, which was so cool and a really special thing.”
According to White, to qualify for the Paralympics, your sport needs to have an official world championship with a minimum of six participating teams from different countries. So far Canada, the United States of America, and Great Britain have committed teams in women’s para hockey, while Norway and Korea are looking to create teams. They hope to introduce the first women’s para hockey world championship in 2025.
“I hope to be at the Paralympics in 2030,” says White. “That would be the dream, but it’s out of my control for the most part right now.”
The world championship will be a step forward among Paralympic team qualifications — the next step in creating an official women’s team.
At elite levels, para hockey is more likely to be separated into men’s and women’s teams, but because the women’s side is underfunded and underdeveloped, mixed-gender teams seem to be the only option for many women. There are many barriers for young women and girls starting para sports, especially para hockey, and sticking with it.
While many sports are male-dominated, para sports are typically even more male-dominated. It can be difficult to find all-women’s para teams in male-dominated sports like hockey, soccer, and rugby. The potential pool of players is limited, and funding is another barrier.
Women and people with disabilities often face discrimination. If you put the two together, women with disabilities in sports are discriminated against more often and in different ways than men with disabilities, or non-disabled people. This type of discrimination can continue to amplify for some people. For example, if you have a disability, are a person of colour, and are part of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, you likely experience many layers of discrimination simultaneously. While these barriers can make it more difficult to access athletic programming, the need for physical activity, fun, and belonging that sport offers isn’t diminished.
From a young age, boys are often more encouraged to play sports and participate in multiple sports than young girls.
According to an excerpt from the book Best Practice for Youth about the reasons for gender differences in youth sport, girls’ lack of participation in sports comes from low confidence, feeling unwelcome, perceived lack of skill, and negative body image. The root of the problem is gender stereotyping. One example is when parents don’t give their daughters as much opportunity for physical activity as they give their sons. This leads to boys participating in more sports than girls.
The book says gender stereotyping also comes from how motor skills (the basic muscle movements we use daily) develop differently between boys and girls. Boys generally develop fundamental motor skills earlier than girls, which can be a problem on the playground. Boys can seem active and sporty, whereas girls can seem passive and quiet. This is where some boys learn to use derogatory and stereotypical phrases like ‘girls are too weak,’ enforcing the feeling that girls aren’t cut out for sports like boys are.
Exposing girls with disabilities to para sports from a younger age could encourage more young girls to start or stay in sports. People with disabilities have fewer opportunities for sports participation in general, and girls with disabilities generally have even lower self-esteem than non-disabled girls.
According to a Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology review women and especially young girls with disabilities drop out of para sports for a number of reasons including cost, limited access to sports, lack of positive or female role models, social stigma, and low self-esteem. These barriers are amplified, especially in young girls ages five to ten, because they’re at an age where they’re learning to build confidence and self-esteem. A Canadian Women & Sport report about the status of women and girls in sports says if a girl hasn’t participated in sports by 10 years old, there is only a 10 per cent chance she will be active as an adult. As girls enter adolescence, sports participation drops by 22 per cent and school sports participation by 26 per cent.
Back on the ice at the Hockey For All Centre, White trails her teammate who has the puck and is barrelling down to the other team’s net. The teammate drops a pass in front of White, but she glides out of arm’s reach. The other team picks up the puck and takes it the other direction. White shakes her head as she pivots around, but continues smiling and focuses back on the game.
Peyton Vergie, the other woman on the ice, has only ever played on mixed-gender teams. When Vergie joined para sports, she knew of two options available in Manitoba — wheelchair basketball and para hockey.
Vergie said joining a mixed-gender para hockey team can be intimidating for female players, which might explain why she and White are the only ones on their team.
It’s obvious Vergie grew up in this environment based on her banter between periods. Vergie tells her male teammates what she thinks they need to improve on and they clap back, saying she needs to reach for the puck next time.
“I have shorter arms than you, I can’t reach it,” Vergie says.
“I feel like growing up with all-boys teams, I’ve learned to stand up for myself … because sometimes they see a girl and think they can push her around,” says Vergie. “… I prefer people to be very blunt with me. I don’t like beating around the bush. You can tell me what I did wrong in a constructive criticism type of way.”
The same energy is present in the dressing room where the entire team gathers: It’s organized chaos, exciting, noisy, and exhilarating. On the ice this energy is channeled into intensity.
Both White and Vergie play for mixed-gender teams at the recreational and provincial level as the only two women on the teams, and on the national women’s team as the only two Manitobans. Both dream of going to the Paralympics with a women’s team — if it ever exists. For now, Vergie says women have to work much harder to make it to that level. Women are allowed to play on the men’s Paralympic team, but it’s extremely rare for a woman to make that roster. On paper, the men’s team is classified as a mixed-gender team, but it would be difficult for a woman to crack that roster.
“Let’s say if I wanted to go [to the Paralympics] in 2026, I would have to make Hockey Canada’s men’s, or [also classified as] mixed team, to be able to go. And that’s a very hard thing to do,” says Vergie. “There’s one woman, Raphaëlle Tousignant, who has done it ever, and that was just a year or two ago.”
Tousignant earned a position on the Canadian Men’s Para Ice Hockey team in 2023, but time will tell if she is selected for the 2026 Paralympics team.
The Paralympics, similar to the Olympics, is the world’s largest international sporting competition for three categories of people with disabilities: Intellectual, physical, and visually impaired. There are several qualifications that differ for each sport and individual, and there can be men’s, women’s, and mixed-gender teams.
Bri Mjaasund Oejen and Lena Schroeder from Norway, along with Jing Yu from China are the only women who have competed at the Paralympics in para ice hockey.
According to a CBC article about Paralympic inclusion, Hockey Canada funds the men’s para hockey team for the Paralympics, but not yet a women’s Paralympic team.
An emailed statement from Hockey Canada said it is working “intently with World Para Ice Hockey and the International Paralympic Committee as they navigate the path towards inclusion of women’s para hockey.”
The concept of having the men’s team being referred to as a mixed-gender team might seem inclusive, but it isn’t when women rarely get picked to participate or are unfairly pitted against a roster of men.
Many sports in the Paralympics are classified as mixed gender, but that is not a realistic solution to gender equity. There is currently no requirement to have a minimum number of women on the men’s para hockey team at the Paralympics, which negates the mixed-gender moniker.
White says a typical stereotype is that women aren’t as aggressive as men in hockey. She says “this isn’t the case whatsoever” because stand-up women don’t get the opportunity at the international level to play contact hockey. White says she’s grateful she can play with contact through her mixed-gender team.
According to a 2024 Access Sport report about providing equal opportunities for teenage girls with disabilities in sports, coaches play a big role in creating a non-judgemental and welcoming sports environment. In the survey, 50 per cent of teenage girls with disabilities say it would be easier for them to participate in sports if their coach/instructor adapted to their needs, and 54 per cent don’t feel their coach understands their disability.
“I didn’t feel like I could join in the activities in PE (physical education),” says an anonymous comment from a survey participant. “The teacher didn’t make any changes so that I could join in with everyone else.”
In the report, 39 per cent of teenage girls with disabilities feel comfortable participating in PE class and just over half participate at all.
In many cases, teachers and coaches aren’t given the proper training to accommodate young women and girls with disabilities in a way that suits their needs.
According to the Education Administration Act on the Government of Manitoba website about teaching certifications, there is a six-credit requirement of inclusive education training to obtain a permanent professional teaching certificate, plus the number of credits required for their degree. While this is a positive step, it doesn’t meet the needs of children with disabilities who want to feel included.
White says as a kid, she remembers her PE teachers being fairly inclusive. At the same time, she says, a kid that age doesn’t necessarily know what they need or how they can be better accommodated.
Access to para sports varies from province to province.
“There’s definitely a difference in the standard across Canada,” says White. “Your biggest places are going to be Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec, which I feel like is for a lot of sports. They just have more resources [because] they’re a bigger hub and have more players. It’s hard to compete with that.”
White’s mixed-gender recreational team practises out of the Hockey For All Centre, the official practice rink of the Winnipeg Jets and Manitoba Moose. She also trains at Sport Manitoba because it’s one of the only fully accessible sports training centres in Winnipeg and offers free training for para athletes.
“In para hockey, if any of the men go to the national level and speak with anybody from Hockey Canada, they [Hockey Canada officials] will tell you that you have to move,” says White. “You cannot stay in Manitoba because there just aren’t enough resources here.”
Among her other wishes, White said she hopes to see the game grow in Manitoba and around the world, especially for young girls.
“Even if they don’t like it and give it up after, I think just exposing them to that and letting them know that the opportunity is there because I didn’t know, and I didn’t play sports until I was about eight or nine,” says White.
Having women’s para hockey teams play in at the Paralympics could go a long way to showing younger players what’s possible.
Spirits are soaring high at the Hockey For All Centre as the game nears its end. The puck slides past the blue line into the other team’s end, stopping in a wide open space until a player from White’s team skates in and scoops the puck up. The player stick handles and passes to another teammate at the last second. The teammate whips off a one-timer. It sails into the top corner of the net with a swoosh. The whistle blows and the goal scorer throws their hands in the air as their teammates congratulate them. The whole team looks proud of their 7-1 win. White has at least one goal on the scoreboard.
The whistle blows to signal the end of the game and both teams exit the ice. White is one of the last to leave. In the dressing room, she sits for a bit in her jersey, appearing to savour the moment, smiling widely at everyone in the room and shouting joyously at her teammates.
It’s pretty clear that if she could, she would go right back out. White is ready to play.
