Moncton High School girls’ hockey team back on the ice after pushing for regulation change | CBC News

Kylie Blackman just wants to play hockey.

So when a rule put in place by the New Brunswick Interscholastic Athletic Association meant large schools couldn’t pull from other schools to put together a team, she didn’t think she’d be able to play during her Grade 12 year.

“I wanted to play this year because I played all my high school years, and I wanted to finish it off [in] my grad year,” she said.

Kylie is a student at Moncton High, one of the schools that wasn’t included in the association’s regulation until recently.

Andy Clark, president of the association, said all school teams used to consist of athletes only from their own schools, until 2021, when the Department of Education proposed a pilot project for small schools that would allow the sharing of players.

When the pilot ended in spring 2023, Clark said, a member school brought forward a motion at the association’s annual general meeting, which would continue the sharing of athletes for small schools.

After some debate it was decided that schools with 300 or fewer students could share players, he said.

Clark said the idea behind this was that larger schools would hopefully be able to draw from their own student bodies to put together a team. 

Limiting it to smaller schools, he said, would prevent “stacking,” where schools could take top players from different schools and combine them into super-team.

“Some students were transferring from one school to another school for sport purposes, which is not the purpose of education. We want students in school for education purposes,” said Clark.

But at Moncton High School, even with a student body of more than 1,300 students, according to its website, there weren’t enough girls interested in hockey to make up a full team.

Larry Cook, the girls’ hockey coach at Moncton High, said the team was three to four players short, which he said would be a safety concern, risking sending tired students onto the ice in the third period.

“We want to feel safe in that regard by having these extra girls … join the team and have those extra legs and extra bodies on the ice with us,” said Cook.

“So this year, we were pretty disappointed, obviously upfront, that we weren’t going to have a team. So we started … petitioning and asking for an exemption.”

Clark said since the original regulation was made through motion at the annual general meeting, the decision had to go back to the association’s full membership.

In the end, Moncton High was successful in the call for change.

No provincial championships

The association members voted to allow larger schools to be able to pull students from up to two other schools. 

Teams are allowed to play in all tournaments, and if the league for the school’s region allows the team to compete, they would be able to play a full league schedule and potentially even become league champions.

The one stipulation would be that they can’t advance to provincial championships.

‘As long as I get to play’

Kaylee Betts is a Grade 12 student at Bernice MacNaughton High School who will be playing for Moncton High.

She said not being able to advance to provincials is OK with her, as long as she can play the season.

Betts has played hockey for all of her years in high school, last year on the Harrison Trimble High School team.

“I’m really happy to be able to get this opportunity again,” she said, “as long as I get to play this season.”

Cook agrees, and he said the Moncton High team has already been accepted into the league and is arranging ice time.

“We’re just looking to get the girls back on ice,” he said.

“Sports play such an integral role in the development of students in high school. So it’s very important, from my perspective, that they be able to participate in sport. And for this group of kids, hockey has been their passion for so many years.”