Stories of sport and rights

We are looking forward to playing ice hockey at the WWMG in Chiavenna.

A hockey team mate of ours Kay Perkins (no longer playing hockey unfortunately) told us about the Masters Winter Games, when she took part in the short track speed skating last year.

Sue Parsons, Lisa Jamieson, Kay Perkins and myself started playing ice hockey in1982 for the Streatham Strikers, London UK, at a time when women were being told they couldn’t play because it was a man’s sport. We fought for ice time and we fought to be recognised by the British Ice Hockey Association and we petitioned the Olympic committee to get equal rights for women’s sport. Now, many years later we are happy to see womens sport being recognised at all these levels and now at the Winter World Masters Games as well.

Myself and Sue Parsons registered to play in Lombardia and then realised we should encourage others to join us as a team, so we created the Ice Crushers.

Thanks to social media, we were able to invite many players from different teams (Streatham, Slough, Oxford, Solent, Telford) to join us. A lot of the members of our team are still playing league hockey, whilst some are now working hard to get fit enough to return to play after many years away.

We range in age from 44 to 63, with some players with over 40 years playing experience, whilst some only started playing a few years ago.

We have several international players joining us as well with representation from Slovakia, Canada, USA and our goalie is currently living in Japan.

We are all very excited to be playing ice hockey in Chiavenna at the WWMG in January 2024.

Happy Hockey!

Sue Nicholson